Death or Victory Page 24

  They may have been glad to leave Montmorency. Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ gives an impression of life deep within enemy territory. The reality for the men was grim. Daily parties were sent out to cut firewood and ‘fascines’ or bundles of wood to strengthen the fortifications, and armed men would be deployed to watch them. Inevitably one or two would be picked off. There were ‘constant skirmishes between our working parties and the Indians, and the enemy’s fire across the river killed and wounded a good many men’. They were watched constantly, ‘the enemy always observing when our parties cut fascines every third or fourth day used to lay ambuscades for them of large parties of Indians and Canadians’. It was miserable for the men but this member of Wolfe’s inner circle found positives even in this situation. The low level violence ‘had the good effect of inuring the men to fighting with the Indians, and explained to them more than precepts what resolution will effect’. The author insists that ‘on all occasions a most determined spirit showed itself among the troops, which ever happens where the general has great qualities, for I believe they always receive his stamp’.50

  Wolfe’s orders for 17 July were very specific in requiring that any detachments sent to cut fascines were to ‘have escorts of light infantry’ and that ‘the working parties are not to go into the woods until the light infantry are posted’.51 However, the shortcomings of these new precautions were shown up that very day. Wolfe’s journal records that ‘the savages attacked the centre of a covering party, killed 5 men and wounded others, carried off three prisoners’. Almost as an afterthought is scribbled the thought ‘cruelty of these savages’.52 Perhaps it was the same attack as that recorded by one of the Louisbourg Grenadiers. In his journal he wrote that ’we went out fascining, and to make oars, with a small party to cover us;—five were killed of which four were scalped, and we was obliged to quit the woods directly; the Indians came up very close, and killed and scalped one man close by us’.53 John Johnson records that there was nothing unusual in this vicious encounter. ‘There was scarcely a day passed,’ he wrote, ’without our working parties being surprised, and very often routed by the skulking parties of Canadians and Indians, they often being three or four times our number; and would sometimes pursue them to the very skirts of our camp; and very often sharp skirmishes would happen between them, which would sometimes be attended with considerable loss, both of killed and wounded.’54 Ramezay describes one ruse used by these French irregulars in a raid on the Montmorency camp. He says that ‘only the three Canadians approached the camp, pretending to flee as soon as they saw a small enemy detachment leave the camp’. The Canadians led the detachment into a trap, a group of Native Americans waiting in ambush: ‘when the Savages were within range, they fired a complete discharge upon them, killing numerous Englishmen, and taking three prisoners’.55

  Actions like this one demonstrated that, especially at Montmorency, the British controlled only the territory enclosed within their ramparts. Beyond was French. Throughout the summer Wolfe issued almost daily orders trying to force his men not to stray beyond the camp and remain vigilant at all times. Obviously the long sojourn aboard ship had led the claustrophobic soldiers to embrace their new freedom because he had to insist that ‘soldiers are to keep close to their encampment, are not to pass without the guards or wander through the country in the disorderly manner that has been observed here’. Despite the danger, the men were kept in the camp only with great difficulty, even by the middle of August when he was still issuing threats: ‘any soldier who passes the out-sentries on any pretence whatever, shall be brought to a court-martial and punished’. The reason for this was the ‘enemies light troops’ which were ‘continually hovering about the camp in hopes of surprising some small guard or some of the sentries’. Things were so bad that ‘for an hour before day, and at least half an hour after broad day light, the whole [force stationed at Montmorency] are to be under arms’.56 The entire British army in North America existed in a state of perpetual tension. Years of warfare with unseen Canadians and Native Americans had forced commanders to keep their men in a constant state of readiness. Hundreds of miles away at Fort Edward as Amherst’s army prepared for the push up through Lake Champlain towards Montreal, the diary of an American colonial officer William Henshaw reflected this heightened security. His men were forbidden from leaving camp after the drummers had Beat Retreat, typically about ten minutes after sunset. The evening’s guards were ‘to lie in the front tents that they may be ready to turn at any time at a moment’s notice’. It took his regiment three minutes to be ‘drawed up’ once the alarm was sounded.57

  It was a very different war from one fought in Europe. There it was seen as murder to kill a sentry in cold blood. Wolfe and the other officers used terms such as ‘assassinate’ when they described such attacks during the summer of 1759. The men in Europe would wander freely through the countryside after a day’s march and buy fresh provisions off the local inhabitants. If they bumped into scouting parties of the enemy they would almost certainly live and let live. Their officers might exchange a few complimentary words of French. Here in North America every soldier that attempted to augment dull rations or explore the surrounding country risked ending up as a mutilated corpse.58

  The defences of the camps were slowly augmented until all three were veritable fortresses, a tribute to the effectiveness of Canadians and Native Americans. A French source records that the Montmorency camp, in particular, was massively fortified: ‘[Wolfe] lined his camp with eleven redoubts, almost all entrenched, fraised and palisaded.’59 At Point Lévis Knox describes a ditch, an abatis, and ‘an excellent palisade-work, with loop-holes for musketry’.60 But defences are worthless without determined defenders manning them. Wolfe tried to bolster the men’s aggression and morale with rewards for good service. On 17 July he sent ‘two sheep and some rum’ to one company for ‘the spirit they showed this morning in pushing those scoundrels of Indians’. However, he also warned against overconfidence, recommending to the officers that they should ‘preserve their people with caution, least they should be drawn too far into the woods and fall into an ambuscade’.61 It is possible to detect in the surviving sources the terror of the sentries as they peered out night after night into the dark; the forest beyond the ramparts alive with threats, real and imagined. Wolfe issued one order that ‘no man should leave his post, under pretence that all his cartridges are fired’, after all, he assured his nervous men, ‘in most attacks by night, it must be remembered, that bayonets are preferable to fire’. No single sentries were posted in the woods, in the usual fashion of the British army, since it gave ‘the enemy frequent opportunities of killing single men at their posts’.62 Groups of no less than eight men would patrol instead, and they must never stray out of hailing distance from the guards at the camp. Wolfe was very precise in his instructions, telling his men that while on guard they did not need to show the customary marks of respect to a passing officer. He also set down precise drills to be followed if they spotted someone in the trees. ‘When any sentry,’ he ordered, ’challenges and is answered “friend” he is to say, with a clear voice, “Advance with the countersign”; when the person advances, the sentry is to receive him in the proper posture of defence. Surprises may be prevented without risking the lives of our own soldiers.’63 Monckton’s Order Book gives the challenge and countersign or ‘parole’ (like most military terms this one was borrowed from the French, meaning ‘spoken word’) each day for the camp at Point Lévis. On 4 September the shouting of ‘Middlesex’ and a reply shortly after of ‘Bristol’ ringing through the North American woodland must have seemed peculiar to those who stopped to think about it.64

  Despite the hovering menace just outside the camp’s walls the soldiers had a remarkable ability to create a recognizable normality within. Again the tents were laid out in regulation streets. Despite Wolfe’s initial ban on women leaving the camp on the tip of the Île d’Orléans, a few resourceful types had made their way across the St Lawrence t
o be with their men. Women were an integral part of eighteenth-century armies, present on every campaign no matter how harsh the surroundings. From the sweltering heat of India to the fever ridden islands of the Indies and the frozen outposts of North America women followed their men in war as well as peace.

  Wolfe disapproved of their presence. He believed that they eroded discipline, sold illegal spirits, and poisoned relations with the locals thanks to their relentless scavenging. Books containing collections of all the military orders for the North American campaigns are replete with, what one suspects, are largely unheeded orders to curb the behaviour of wives, girlfriends, and other female camp followers. Wolfe had limited the number that each regiment was officially allowed to bring; on other campaigns ten women per company was normal. For the Quebec expedition, Wolfe had insisted that a company of seventy men was allowed only three wives, while a company of 100 men could bring one more.65 By this calculation around ninety women should have sailed with the army and received a half ration of food daily. It is certain that several times this number actually did so. They found their way on board transports or even paid for their passage from New England merchants who supplied the fleet. They were a fact of military life, even here in the heart of enemy territory.

  Soldiers were wedded to the army and most commanding officers did not approve of a ‘bigamous’ relationship with an actual woman at the same time. Wolfe wrote early in his career that he ’recommends to the soldiers not to marry at all; the long march, the embarkation that will soon follow, must convince them that many women in the regiment are very inconvenient, especially as some of them are not so industrious, nor so useful to their husbands as a soldier’s wife ought to be’. He told his officers at the same time that they were to ‘discourage matrimony among the men as much as possible; the service suffers by the multitude of women already in the regiment’. He clearly regarded them as a pernicious influence; on garrison duty in Dover he worried that the local ladies were ‘women of loose and disorderly conduct’ and he banned his men from seeing them.66 His repeated efforts to keep women away from his men suggest that he had little success in doing so; women tested the mythical coercive mechanisms of the Georgian army well beyond their limits.

  Occasionally permission was given to formally marry a woman. Wolfe granted it reluctantly and only if the soldier had ‘consult[ed] his officer before his marriage, that the woman’s character may be enquired into’.67 But even this legal relationship did not guarantee that the wife would be allowed to follow the husband on campaign. Before departure, in a terrible ritual the phrases ‘to go’ or ‘not to go’ were written on scraps of paper and placed in a hat. The women of the regiment drew them out. Screams of joy or utter despair attended the embarking of the men, as this grim task was often left to the last minute on the quayside in an attempt to postpone the pain as long as possible. Crying men were dragged from their families, there were even a few examples of those who killed themselves on the spot rather than say goodbye to wives and children who faced destitution.68

  Some women hid themselves on board; others disguised themselves and marched on in the ranks. There is one example of a woman, Hannah Snell, who hid her sex and served four and a half years in the marines. An extraordinary feat, especially given that during the siege of Pondicherry in 1748 she was wounded and extracted the musket ball with thumb and forefinger. In 1750 she left the army, received a pension from the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and then revealed her sex. A fellow soldier instantly proposed to her, they married, and she made money performing infantry drills on stage.69

  Other women were scarcely less involved in the fighting than Snell. Martha May’s husband was in the 1st/60th Royal Americans serving in Pennsylvania. She wrote to the commanding officer begging his pardon after she had publicly hurled abuse at him. She pointed out that ‘I have been a Wife 22 years and have Traveld with my Husband every Place or County the Company Marcht too and have workt very hard ever since I was in the Army.’ She hoped that she would be able to ‘go with my Poor Husband, one time more to carry him and my good Officers water in ye Hottest Battle as I have done before’.70 Half a century later, at Waterloo, the wife of Sergeant Major Edwards in the Hussars rode a pony through her husband’s unit asking the men what was the matter with them and lambasting them as cowards. Women like May and the formidable Mrs Edwards played an important and overlooked role in a campaign. They cooked, nursed the ill, and made good money selling food to the soldiers and washing their limited wardrobe. Still more surprisingly women lined the edge of battlefields, some carrying water and ammunition to their men, others waiting to pounce on the wounded for a chance of plunder. Casualties were cared for by women nurses in the hospital on the Île d’Orléans. Wolfe tolerated women as long as they carried out their more necessary functions. But he tried to limit their ability to sell alcohol and loosen the strict bonds of regimental discipline. He also attempted to limit their ability to spread disease. ‘If any woman in the regiment,’ he had ordered years before, ‘has a venereal disorder, and does not immediately make it known to the surgeon, she shall upon the first discovery be drummed out of the regiment.’71

  Whether Wolfe liked it or not, women played a key role in the logistics of any campaign. Without them acting as cooks, suppliers, nurses, and laundry workers the infantry of the army would have been put under much greater pressure. They were a key part of the most impressive logistical organization in the world. It was founded on the deep pockets of the British government backed by the financial community in the City of London. Rather than raising taxes to pay for everything directly, the government was able to borrow on a previously unimaginable scale while the tax revenue serviced these loans. Thanks to its reliable repayment record and the trust that the City had in the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, the British government was able to raise more money at much better interest rates than the French, despite Britain’s smaller population and economy. This paid for men, supplies, and the ships to carry them up the St Lawrence. Increasingly, professional government officials ran the system with far more efficiency than their counterparts across the Channel. British taxpayers complained but their money was being spent with greater effectiveness than ever before.

  In an age where the glittering signs of McDonald’s and Pizza Hut adorn US army bases from Korea to Iraq, the diet of Wolfe’s army seems far from extravagant. But it was enough to keep calories flowing into the bellies of his hard-pressed men. Each week a soldier could expect to receive seven pounds of all-important bread, which could be eaten straight or boiled with lard and other ingredients to make a soup. One piece of salted pork and one of beef was issued, as well as a pint and a half of oatmeal, the same amount of peas, and half a pound each of butter and cheese, or if these were in short supply, half a pint of oil. Men typically pooled their rations with their tent mates, the men they trained, laboured, and fought beside. If one of them was lucky enough to have his wife in camp, she would often do the cooking, while groups of bachelors could pay another man’s wife to do theirs. They ate off simple plates of pewter or even wood. To swill this down the men were given a quarter of a pint, a ‘gill’ of rum per day, which they would mix with water, thus making ‘grog’.72 Officially sanctioned wives were on half rations, children on quarter. Spruce beer was brewed in huge quantities to keep scurvy at bay. Knox was cautiously positive about his diet. All in all, they were ‘tolerably well provided with the conveniences of life’. He goes on to say that although ‘at times butcher’s meat is scarce’ other food supplies can fill the void such as ‘young horse flesh’ or ‘a loin of a colt’ both of which ‘eat well’. In addition he concludes, ‘there are many other parts of the carcass, which, if disguised in the same manner that one meets with other victuals at table, may deceive the nicest palate’.73 These rations may be unappealing to the modern gastronome but they provided the men with the energy required to work, march, and fight for the whole summer. Keeping the men fed was a massive achievement; the limiting factor i
n most pre-nineteenth-century military campaigns was logistical. The lack of easily transportable, long-lasting provisions had destroyed many more armies than enemy action. In 1757, after the fall of Fort William Henry, the entire New York northern frontier lay at Montcalm’s feet. A shortage of supplies ruled out a drive towards Albany even if the cautious Montcalm had wished to take advantage of this opportunity.

  Frenchmen did, and still do, regard the British diet as tasteless and monotonous at best. In the eighteenth century Franco-British competition infected all aspects of life: religion, trade, political economy, and even food. Britons revelled in eschewing French sauces and delicacies. Plain meat was the price of liberty. A song heard in taverns across the land stated bluntly, ‘Down, down with French dishes, up up with roast beef.’ It ended with a roar: ‘Here’s Liberty, Loyalty—aye—and Roast Beef.’ The same was true of beer drinking. Necessity was celebrated. The gloomy British climate did not support grapes, so they and the wine that came from them were despised. ‘Beer drinking Britons can never be beat’ ran another popular song. The link between diet and patriotism could not have been clearer: ‘beef-eating, beer-drinking Britons are souls/ who shed their last blood for their country and King’.74