Death or Victory Page 33
One such Native American on the hunt for scalps was brought dripping in front of Townshend on 8 August when two sentries spotted the former swimming across the Montmorency. Knox suggested that the assassin was ‘drunken’ and trying to kill a British sentry to win favour with Montcalm.84 Native Americans were well rewarded for services to New France. Bougainville wrote that ‘those who distinguished themselves would receive medals and gorgets’. These medals hung on ribbons round the necks of the warriors. Bougainville tells us that ‘on one side [was] the imprint of the King…on the other a French warrior and an Indian shaking hands’.85 Townshend’s journal says that a soldier spotted the Native American and wasted no time in ‘presenting his piece to his breast’. Whereupon the Native American ‘got down on his knees threw away his knife and delivered himself up’. Wolfe was very pleased at the vigilance shown by the sentry and encouraged others to emulate it. A few days later he announced to the army that the sentry was to receive a five-guinea reward.86 The Native American was brought before Townshend, who was keen to see one at close quarters. It made a change; ‘most nights,’ he noted in his diary, ‘we hear the Indians hollow in the woods all about us’ but could never see them. Townshend was unimpressed and described him as ‘a very savage looking brute and naked all [apart from] an arse clout [loin cloth]’. Understandably, ‘he seemed to be very apprehensive of [me] putting him to death’. He spoke a tongue which even those who spoke a few Native American languages could not understand so it is probable that he was from the far west.87 The bedraggled prisoner was then loaded onto one of the larger warships to be taken to Britain as a curiosity. But he managed to dodge this strange fate. A French journal reports that ‘one night, whilst the sentinels were asleep, he found means to disencumber himself of part of his irons and flinging himself out of a port hole into the water’. Quick-witted sentries on deck spotted him and ‘fired several musket shots at random upon the water’. Knox says boats were launched in an attempt to find him but ‘as the savages in general are dextrous in swimming and diving, their searches were fruitless’.88 He made good his escape, though, and rejoined Montcalm’s army, claiming that he was to have been given as a gift to the British king.89
By early September the lands bordering the St Lawrence had been laid to waste. Canadians and Native Americans had been slaughtered, others interred on British ships anchored in the river. A sergeant in the Louisbourg Grenadiers estimated that ‘we have destroyed upwards of fourteen hundred fine farm houses’.90 One Canadian historian has put the total number of farms destroyed as high as 4,000. 91 To some of the troops these operations were just punishment for Canadian inhumanity and a welcome chance to accumulate plunder. To many others it was war at its worst. Robert MacPherson wrote to his brother Andrew in Scotland describing the countryside as ‘most cruelly wasted’.92 Wolfe wrote a long report back to Pitt on 2 September, which was published in the Annual Register, a London newspaper, as was customary. Tellingly the paragraph relating to the laying waste of the countryside was not made public, as it did not show British arms in a positive light. Perhaps the toughest condemnation of all came from the pen of the third in command of the British army, Brigadier Townshend. In an emotional letter to his wife, which he began by saying, ‘the happiness of writing to you is beyond all I know’, he poured out his heart. ‘My affection for you,’ he continued, ‘and your dear little ones convince me how unfit I am for this scene, which another month will thank god give conclusion to.’ He told her that the sight of the captive women and children being brought into camp reminded him of his own loved ones back in Britain. Had he listened to his ‘own nature more’ he would ‘not been now in a scene of ambition, confusion, and misery; and you oppressed as I know you must be, with terrors and affliction’. ’I never served so disagreeable a campaign as this. Our unequal force has reduced our operations to a scene of skirmishing cruelty and devastation. It is war of the worst shape. A scene I ought not to be in, for the future believe me my dear Charlotte I will seek the reverse of it.’ He ended by telling her that ‘I shall come back in Admiral Saunders’ ship and in two months shall again belong to those I ought never to have left—Adieu. Your most affectionate husband and faithful friend.’93 Townshend felt repugnance for a campaign that had brought little success. By August the British army had been sorely tried by the heat, Native attacks, French resistance, mosquitoes, and hard labour but the following months would bring greater tests yet.
ELEVEN
‘We find ourselves outnumbered and we fear, out generaled’
IN THE LONG MONTH of burning, crop destruction, and plunder one raid alone had a notable military purpose. Brigadier Murray commanded a detachment upriver of the city. Here the northern bank of the river towered out of the water and an army was only able to land at a small number of creeks or inlets which were protected by the French. Twice he had attempted to land and twice he had been repulsed with hardly a soldier ever having even stood on dry land. Murray was determined to learn from his failures above the city and on 17 August he began an operation designed to confuse the enemy and avoid their roving patrols on the north bank of the St Lawrence. Chief Engineer Patrick Mackellar reported that at 2000 hours Murray’s redcoats boarded the flat-bottomed boats while the marines stayed in their camp at St Antoine on the south coast, ‘with the order to make the usual number of fires that night and all the show they could the next day’.1 The boats pushed off and rode the flood tide around fourteen miles upriver to Port Neuf on the north shore. Thanks to Murray’s insistence that they take the boats rather than the ships, with their towering masts silhouetted even against the night sky, the French had not noticed the move. An hour after sunrise, according to one of the British soldiers, they landed, ‘to our surprise, without opposition’.2 Knowing that no sojourn on the hallowed north shore would be left untroubled for long Murray rapidly formed his little force into a column, with light infantry at the front and Fraser’s 78th Highlanders bringing up the rear. The target of the expedition was the village of Deschambault three miles upstream. Intelligence reports had informed the British that there was a sizeable magazine of military supplies at Deschambault, which Murray meant to destroy.
They marched ‘without molestation’ until they got within sight of the church of St Joseph. Churches were the most solidly constructed buildings in these parishes and had become the focal point for military operations. Detachments of British soldiers regularly barricaded themselves inside churches when patrolling through hostile country. Now from out of this church poured the garrison of Deschambault, ‘a captain of De La Sarre’s regiment…with about 60 regulars’. There was little honour to be won in certain death to defend a heap of supplies and these outnumbered men rapidly withdrew to the protection of the woods.3
Quickly Murray searched the village and found a mountain of kit in a fine house belonging to Quebec merchant Monsieur Payreau. Murray reported to Wolfe that ‘it consisted of that clothing, spare camp equipage, arms etc of the regular troops in Canada and of the Marquis de Montcalm and Monsieur de Lévis personal baggage’. Another British witness made a quick estimate that in all it was worth about ninety thousand pounds sterling. Murray ordered his men to set fire to the lot of it. ‘There were many explosions,’ the report continued, ‘whence I conclude some of the casks in the cellar were gun powder or cartridges.’ He destroyed ‘all that could be of service to the enemy’.4 Mackellar wrote that ‘there were above forty different explosions of gunpowder, by which two neighbouring houses were unintentionally destroyed’.5 The British troops had to hurry, for as the morning progressed French rapid reaction troops were arriving in the outskirts of the village, drawn by the pillar of smoke.
The French regarded the raid as extremely serious. A journal reports that
this was the finest part of Canada; it was from the harvest at Deschambault that we expected our largest supply; and it was much to be apprehended, that the English, who had laid waste more than a mile and half of the country upon the side of the river
opposite to the Pointe aux Trembles, either by fire or by sword, would do the same at this place.
But it also lay astride Montcalm’s supplies from the heart of Canada: ‘at the same place a large convoy was expected, of corn and of bullocks, the loss of which would inevitably be followed by that of the colony’. Perhaps the greatest fear of all was that ‘the enemy would form an establishment there, take the post of Jacques Cartier in the rear, establish himself at both places, and cut off all communication between Quebec, Trois Rivière and Montréal’. This, the journal concluded, ‘must cause the loss of the colony’.6
Montcalm was seriously concerned. When he heard of the landing he mounted and ‘left immediately with the grenadiers to join M. de Bougainville’. Vaudreuil, his journal says, ‘regarded the event as being of little importance’ but, dramatically, Montcalm believed it was ‘the greatest threat to the continuance of the colony’. He force marched his men to Pointe aux Trembles, where he heard that the British had withdrawn and returned to Beauport. His diarist asked, ‘What would have happened if [Wolfe] had established himself at Deschambault?’ The answer was that ‘it would not have been easy to eject him’. Mont-calm’s aide wrote that ’we all feared this, and M. de Montcalm felt the importance of this position so strongly that he left there intending to attack it, strong or weak, entrenched or not. Little communication with our magazines, little food here, the country open to the enemy; the colony was lost or is going to be.’7
French forces arrived on horseback and on foot. Murray reported that ‘they fired constantly upon us for two or three hours’ but ‘never came near enough to hurt a man of my detachment’. The reason he supposed for this was ‘the dread they had of the English Musket’. He then says that he was forced to order his men to fire back ‘in their way, at a distance’. Typically the British liked to save their fire until the enemy were very close, at a range where the musket’s inaccuracy mattered little. By 1800 hours Murray realized that time would only bring more French troops and he began the tricky process of disengaging from the enemy and embarking on the boats, taking stolen sheep with them. The light infantry brought up the rear and not a man was lost. Bougainville took dubious credit for their evacuation saying that ‘I forced them to re-embark.’8 Murray learnt two key lessons: the first was that the tides could be harnessed to great effect and were not just a malignant force; the second was about the Canadians, who ‘will never attack us but in woods or when we are in the boats, their arms and order will not admit of it’.9
One French officer dismissed the attack claiming that ‘all these transactions were attempted with no events of consequence, and in no shape forwarded the main design of General Wolfe’.10 True, the loss of spare equipment and personal baggage, though no doubt galling to the moody Montcalm, did not hasten the fall of Canada; however, a more perceptive eyewitness realized that allowing the British to operate with impunity in the river above Quebec was a mistake. The journal claims that ‘all judicious persons…maintained, that the king’s two frigates well armed, ought to have been stationed immediately above Quebec; which would have prevented the English flat bottomed boats from appearing on that side, and would have secured to us the navigation of the river’.11
Murray continued his raids above Quebec, but below the town Wolfe was growing increasingly impatient to have some of his best troops back with him. He wrote to Monckton on 19 August saying, ‘I wish we had Murray’s Corps back, that we might be ready to decide it with ‘em.’12
A combination of adverse winds, heavy rainfall adding to the flow of the St Lawrence, and French small boat activity had severed Wolfe’s communication with Murray altogether. A series of letters survive from Wolfe to his junior brigadier, each angrier than the last. On 13 August he wrote,
I have written two letters to you, if they get to your hands, I conclude we shall see you down…the Light Infantry and Amherst’s regiment, your own person…are much wanted here, and if you have no very great stroke in mind I shall be glad to see you back. The Light Infantry must get into the Isle of Orleans as soon as possible.13
By 22 August he was using Murray as a, possibly rather convenient, excuse for taking no offensive action against Montcalm. He wrote to Monckton, his second in command, saying that Murray was putting ‘an entire stop’ to his operations. By his ‘long stay above’ and ‘detaining all our boats’ he was ‘master of our operations’.14
Wolfe’s letters were not finding their way to Murray. As Knox reported, thanks to the enemy’s floating batteries, ‘our boats cannot pass up or down’.15 In the slow battle of attrition for naval supremacy in the narrows, British might was beginning to tell but it was taking time. A French journal recorded that ‘great advantages’ were derived from these ‘small boats mounted with cannon’ but of the original fourteen ‘half of them had been destroyed or were unfit for service’ and there was no time or money to build more.16 The remaining craft were still enough to close the narrows to British boats. A detachment of Knox’s regiment, the 43rd, attempted to get through to Murray by marching along the south shore but the Etchemin River was so swollen that as they tried to ford it one man was drowned and others swept away and forced to swim back to the shore. Knox added that ‘to complete the disagreeableness of their situation, the enemy fired at them’ from their battery across the St Lawrence at Sillery. 17
On 24 August Wolfe ordered Monckton to fire rockets from Gorham’s post, ‘so our ships above may see them: this will be a hint to the people above that we want something’.18 This finally seemed to work. Murray returned to Point Lévis on 25 August bringing with him the first news of the other British thrusts into Canada. The situation he returned to in the Quebec basin was far from happy. The town and surrounding lands were smouldering wrecks, no progress had been made towards capturing the capital of Canada, and the army he rejoined was dejected, divided, and, worst of all, diseased.
French attacks on the British camps at Lévis and Montmorency had been kept up with a terrible constancy. Wolfe wrote to a government minister in London that in this ’woody country, so well known to the enemy, and an enemy so vigilant and hardy as the Indians and Canadians are…scarce a night passes that they are not close in upon our posts, waiting an opportunity to surprise and murder. There is very little quarter given on either side.’19 It was often the most enterprising who died first. Losses fell heavily among promising young officers or seasoned NCOs who sought to stop the flight of their men or led spirited counter-attacks. Wolfe wrote to Monckton informing him of one such death. He concluded that ‘we are particularly unlucky in the loss of officers—it has fallen upon the most deserving’.20 Knox himself had a close shave. The enterprising young officer was sent to Montmorency on an errand and took the opportunity of making a full and conscientious reconnoitre of the fortifications and the enemy positions across the river. As he stood there making notes and sketches, ’I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when, throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern extremity of their breast-work, next to the main river, to fire at me; this obliged me to retire as fast as I could out of his reach.’ When Knox thanked the sentry, ‘he told me the fellow had snapped his piece twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan’. Thanks to damp powder or perhaps an obstruction in the touch-hole Knox survived to furnish posterity with the most detailed and colourful account of the Quebec campaign.21
Wolfe’s men were gaining experience but not enough to staunch the inexorable flow of losses. Townshend recorded in his journal that ‘there have been parties every night in ambush for the Indians since the order was given out but has met with no success’.22 There was a particular incident on 11 August that showed the utter terror which was often the result of Native American attacks. Knox describes how a ‘body of Indians’ crept towards a party out cutting wood, ‘whereupon they ran in confusion to their arms, and, without any kind of order, fired impetuously at everything they saw, whether friends or enemies’.23 Wolfe himself rushed into the fray with the
camp guards followed by two six pounder cannon which chased the Native Americans away. He was livid. In his orders for the day he let it be known that ‘the general was extremely surprised to see the disorder that seemed to run through the working party this morning; and foresees that if a stop is not immediately put to such unsoldierly proceedings, they may have very dangerous consequences’. From this point forward, any man who leaves the platoon without orders shall be made ‘an immediate example’ of by the officers.24 By this Wolfe meant summary execution. While commanding a battalion in Canterbury a few years before Wolfe had written that ’a soldier who quits his rank, or offers to flag [surrender], is instantly to be put to death by the officer who commands that platoon, or the officer or sergeant in rear of that platoon; a soldier does not deserve to live who won’t fight for his king and country’.25 Wolfe was no sadist. His views were a commonplace among military officers of the day regardless of nationality. The nature of military authority, and the necessity for survival on a battlefield, dictated a rough and obvious discipline. This ferocity simply reflects the effect which wavering men could have on their fellows. A smart line of soldiers could become a disorderly, panicked rabble in a flash if just one of them lost heart and turned tail.
Punishments for any misdemeanour in the Georgian army could be harsh. Cowardice was regarded as totally unacceptable. If the perpetrator escaped execution he may well have been forced to walk ‘the gauntlet’. Stripped to the waist he had to walk between lines of troops who beat him with sticks, a practice that often resulted in death. Some officers preferred a more psychological punishment. On 22 August Thomas Darby and George Everson were named and shamed in the General Orders that went out to the entire army for ‘having behaved in a scandalous and unsoldierlike manner upon their post last night’. Darby’s crime was ‘screaming out and firing his piece’, while they had both given ‘the most evident tokens of fear’. They were ordered to stand for an hour by the latrine ‘each with a woman’s cap upon his head this evening, as a small punishment for the dishonour they have brought upon the corps and their brother soldiers’. When the army moved in future they were ordered to ‘march in front of all other parties without a grain of powder in their pieces, where they may have the opportunity to wipe off the infamy they now lay under’. Wolfe ended the order by saying that he did ‘not suppose there is another man in the regiment who is afraid of the French or their contemptible allies; but if there should be any such, they are desired to give their names into the adjutant that they may be properly posted in time of service’.26