Part 2
MONTCALM:--How can you, sir, justify your imprudence in running headlong into the woods opposite to our intrenchments, with two thousand men, who naturally ought to have been cut to pieces, and neither you nor any man of your detachment escape? Nine hundred Indians had invested you all round at a pistol shot from you, and had already cut off your retreat, without your perceiving it. So soon as the Indians had surrounded you in the wood, they sent their officer Langlade to acquaint M. de Levis that they had got you in their net, but that your detachment, appearing to be about two thousand men, greatly superior to them in number, they begged earnestly of M. de Levis to order M. de Repentigny to pass the ford with eleven hundred men, which he commanded in these intrenchments, and join them; that they would be answerable upon their heads if a single man of your detachment should get back to your camp; and they did not think themselves strong enough to strike upon you without this reinforcement of Canadians. There were a great many officers at M. de Levis' lodgings when Langlade came to him on behalf of the Indians, and this General having consulted them, after giving his own opinion on the affair: "that it was dangerous to attack an army in the wood, as they could not know the number of men there; that it might be all the English army, which consequently might bring on a general engagement without being prepared for it; and that if he happened to be repulsed, he would be blamed for engaging in an affair, without holding previously an order from his superiors, M. de Vaudreuil and M. de Montcalm." The officers respected too much the General not to be of his way of thinking, and it must ever be so from flattery. His aide-de-camp alone maintained a different opinion, out of a real friendship for M. de Levis. He told them that there was not the smallest probability it could be all the English army, since the Indians, who never fail to magnify the number, computed them at only two thousand men. That even supposing it to be the whole English army, it would be the most lucky thing that could happen to us to have a general engagement in the woods, where a Canadian is worth three disciplined soldiers, as a soldier in a plain is worth three Canadians; and that nothing was more essential than to select the propitious moment and the way of fighting for those who composed the two-thirds of the army, which was the case with the Canadians. On the contrary, the English army was almost entirely composed of regulars with very few militia.
That M. de Levis could not do better than in ordering M. de Repentigny to cross the river immediately with his detachment _en échelon_, and join the Indians, without losing moments very precious; that at the same time he should send instantly to inform me of his adventure, in order to make all the army advance towards the ford, each regiment taking the place of the other marched off; so that the Regiment Royal Roussillon, the nearest to the ford, should go off directly to take the post that Repentigny would quit in crossing the river, and observing the same for the rest of the army; that by this means the engaging a general affair was much to be wished for, supposing all the English army to be in the woods opposite the ford; in short, that if there was a possibility of our being defeated and repulsed in the woods, which could scarce happen, according to all human probability, we had our retreat assured in the depth of these woods, well known to the Canadians, where the English troops could not pursue them, so that in no shape could M. de Levis run the least risk.
His aide-de-camp added, that when fortune offers her favours, "they ought to be snatched with avidity." These reasons made no impressions on M. de Levis, and Langlade was sent back to the Indians with a negative reply.
There was two miles from M. de Levis' quarters to the place where the Indians were in ambush. Langlade came back with new entreaties and earnest solicitations to induce M. de Levis to make Repentigny cross the ford with his detachment, but the General could not be prevailed upon to give a positive order to Repentigny to join the Indians.
He wrote a letter to Repentigny by Langlade, wherein he told him "having the greatest confidence in his prudence and good conduct, he might pass the river with his detachment, if he saw a certainty of success." His aide-de-camp told him, whilst he was sealing the letter, that Repentigny had too much judgment and good sense to take upon himself an affair of that importance; and his opinion of Repentigny was immediately justified by his answer; he asked M. de Levis to give him a clear and positive order. After thus loitering about an hour and a half, M. de Levis resolved at last to go himself to the ford, and give there his orders verbally; but he had scarce got half way to it when he heard a brisk fire. The Indians, losing all patience, after having remained so long hid at a pistol shot from you, like setter dogs upon wild fowl, at last gave you a volley, killed about a hundred and fifty of your soldiers, and then retired without losing a man. It is evident that had Repentigny passed the river with his detachment of eleven hundred Canadians, you must have been cut to pieces, and that affair would have terminated your expedition. Your army could have no more hopes of succeeding after such a loss; their spirits would have been damped, and Canada would have been secure from any further invasion from Great Britain.
Fortune was always as favourable to you, as she constantly frowned upon us. M. de Levis is not to be blamed; an officer who serves under the orders of others can only be reproached when he does not execute punctually the orders he receives from his superiors; and he has always reason to be cautious and diffident in such cases where his honour and reputation may be engaged, as none can be positively certain of the issue of any military enterprise, and if success does not crown the venture, of which you have voluntarily burthened yourself, though undertaken from the best of motives and apparently for the good of the service, thousands of mouths will open to spit venom against you.
But of all others, the ignorant amongst the military, and the knaves, to screen themselves, will surely be violent: this is so much the more astonishing, in the profession of arms, where sentiments of honour and honesty ought to be the foundation.
WOLFE:--My intention in approaching so near your post at the ford was to examine it carefully, as I then had formed the design to attack it, little imagining that such a considerable detachment as I had with me would have been exposed to be set on by your Indians. Accustomed to European warfare, I could never have thought that a body of men should have been so long, so close to me without discovering them. Your intrenchments there appeared to be very trifling, but the sight of earth thrown up is respectable, and not to be despised.
MONTCALM:--Your attack of the 31st of July, at the only place of our camp which was inaccessible, appeared to me unaccountable. From Quebec to Beauport, which was about four miles, it is a marshy ground, very little higher than the surface of the St. Lawrence at full tide. The heights begin at the ravine at Beauport, and rise gradually all along the border of the river, until at Johnstone's redoubt and battery--where you made your descent and attack--they become a steep high hill, which ends in a deep precipice at the Sault de Montmorency. Opposite to Johnstone's redoubt it is so steep that your soldiers could scarce be able to climb it, even without the encumbrance of their arms.
Besides this natural fortification, we had a continued intrenchment all along the edge of the hill, from Beauport to the Sault, so traced and conducted by M. Johnstone that it was everywhere flanked, and the sloping of it served as a glacis; thus the fire from the front and flanks would have destroyed the three-fourths of your army before they could reach the top of the hill.
But supposing that some of your troops had reached the top of the hill, up to our trenches, after surmounting these difficulties, my grenadiers were drawn up in battle behind them, ready to charge upon them, with their bayonets upon their muskets, the instant any of your soldiers should appear at the trenches.
The swampy, sinking ground, from the redoubt to the foot of the hill, was not one of the smallest difficulties you had in your way to come at us.
It is true the Scotch Highlanders, who were your forlorn hope, had got over it and had reached the foot of the hill, though certainly very few returned; but these turfy swamps, when a certain number of men have passed them, become at last impassible, and your soldiers must have sunk down in it above the head, multitudes of them perishing there in the most useless and disagreeable manner. Thus, sir, I hope you see clearly the folly and rashness of that attack, and that your army must have been totally destroyed, without hope, had not heaven wrought a miracle in your favor, after a long cessation of them, which alone could save you.
You were no sooner hotly engaged in the attack, without a possibility of withdrawing yourself out of the scrape, when from a clear sunshine there fell in that most critical juncture, of a sudden, the most violent even, down pour of rain from a cloud, which, as the cloud that saved Eneas from the fury of Diomed, placed you immediately out of our sight, so that in an instant we could not see half way down the hill. You profited, as a wise man, of this event to make good your retreat. When the shower was over and we could see you, we found, to our sorrow, that you had escaped us, and that you were then out of the reach of our fire, marching, in a well-formed column, back to your camp at the Sault, well satisfied to have got out of that adventure with the loss only of between five and six hundred men.
It was a long time before I could be persuaded that you were in earnest. I had always expected your descent and attack would have been betwixt the St. Charles river and the ravine of Beauport. All that tract of ground, about four miles extent, was everywhere favourable to you, if you had made your real descent in the middle of it, opposite to M. Vaudreuil's lodging, with feint attacks at Johnstone's redoubt, and at the Canardière near the river St. Charles, forcing our intrenchments there, which could not resist an instant a well-formed column. The head of it, composed of the Scotch Highlanders, might have easily penetrated into the plain, separating our army into two parts by the centre, having lodged yourself in the south side of the ravine of Beauport, and have taken the hornwork upon the St. Charles river, sword in hand, without much difficulty or loss of men. In short, all this might have been effected in an hour's time, without meeting with any considerable resistance from our army, thus divided and opened by the centre; and a complete victory, which would have crushed us to pieces without hope, would have crowned you with justly merited laurels.
WOLFE:--I own to you, sir, I was greatly deceived with regard to the height and steepness of the hill, which did not appear considerable, even with a telescope, from the river St. Lawrence; it was only when I got to the redoubt that I saw it such as it really is. I began at seven in the morning to fire at your camp from my battery at the Sault (of forty cannons) mostly four-and-twenty pounders. The _Centurion_, a man-of-war of sixty guns, did the same, as also the _Two Cats_, which had on board all the tools necessary for the workmen. They gave you continually their broadsides, firing upon your camp, as I did from my battery, like platoons of infantry.
I dare say you never saw artillery better served and kept up until six in the evening when I began my landing at low water. I imagined that this terrible cannonade all that day, without a moment's intermission, would have intimidated your Canadians and make them quit the trenches; my battery at the Sault being thirty or forty feet higher than your camp, we saw them down at the shore. Certainly you must have lost a great number of men.
MONTCALM:--That brave militia deserves justly the greatest praise. Not a man of them stirred from his post, and they showed as much ardour, courage and resolution as my regular troops. I had no more than fifty men killed and wounded by your furious cannonade, which proves how little cannons are hurtful in comparison to the dread and respect they inspire. Permit me, sir, to tell you that your countrymen, the English, appear to me, from their conduct in Canada, to be as rash, inconsiderate and hot-headed as the French, who have ever enjoyed that character, notwithstanding your countrymen's reputation for coolness and phlegmatic bravery, since I have seen several examples of their attacking us before they had examined the _locale_, or known our position; and if the two nations are compared impartially, I am persuaded that you will do us the justice to own that in our operations in Canada we have shown much more circumspection and coolness than your English generals. Your attack of the 31st July, without having procured beforehand an exact knowledge of the hill and of the places adjacent, is not the first example of great temerity and impatience on their part.
The proximity of your camp to this hill might have furnished you the means to have a thorough knowledge of our position, by sending proper persons to cross over the ford of the river Montmorency where it falls into the river St. Lawrence, and where it is fordable at low water.
They might, in a dark night and bad weather, have not only examined the steepness of the height, but have even gone over all our camp without being discovered; I always imagined you did so until the day of your attack, which soon convinced me of the contrary. Your brother in arms, Abercrombie, your predecessor in the command of the army, committed the same fault at Ticonderoga as you did the 31st of July; but it cost him much dearer, the clouds which saved you not having come to his assistance.
I set out from Montreal on the 5th of May, 1758, to go to Ticonderoga, with all my regular troops--the regiments of La Sarre, La Reine, Royal Rousillon, Berne, Guienne, Languedoc, Berry of two battalions, and the independent companies of the marine detached in Canada; the regiments from France not being recruited, the whole amounted to only about four thousand men.
I had no positive information that the English army had formed the design to come by the lake St. Sacrament in order to attack Ticonderoga (Carillon), and from thence to go to Montreal--but I suspected it, from the proximity of this ford to your settlement upon lake St. Sacrament; nor did I cease beseeching continually M. Vaudreuil, who was then at Quebec, to send me with all possible diligence the Canadian militia, which was the principal force for the defence of the colony.
M. Vaudreuil, who has neither common sense, nor judgment, could not find out that my military conjectures were grounded; and instead of sending me the Canadians, he gave them permission to remain at Montreal, sixty leagues from Ticonderoga, to attend to their agricultural pursuits.
I dare not allege that he was informed, by the Indians of the Iroquois nation, that the object of the English was to invade Canada; that their army was on their way to lake St. Sacrament; that it was with the view of sacrificing me, and making me the victim of a cabal, who led him and governed him blindly, that he kept from me the Canadians.
The 7th of July my conjectures were verified by the arrival of the English army at the Chûte, where lake St. Sacrament terminates, about four miles from Ticonderoga, consisting of six thousand three hundred men, commanded by General Abercrombie, who had succeeded to General Braddock, killed the year before at the river Ohio.
The return of a detachment which I had placed at the Chûte, as an advanced post, who had lost an hundred and fifty men, killed by the English on their arrival there, was a sad confirmation of the bad news. It is scarce possible to imagine a more dangerous and critical situation than mine--without the aid of Canadians, whose way of fighting was so essential to me in the woods--more useful in those countries than regular troops. Fort Carillon, or Ticonderoga, was a square, regularly fortified, each face of it about seventy fathoms in length.
It had four bastions--the walls of masonry, doubled with a rampart, as likewise a ditch, covered way, and glacis. M. de Bourlamarque, an officer of great merit and intelligence, had added a half moon to it.
To retire with my four thousand troops would have been abandoning the colony to General Abercrombie, as the fort could not hold out long against so considerable an army; and being on that side the key of Canada, with the possession of it in the hands of the English, they might go directly to Montreal, and be there in fifteen days, without finding on their way the least obstruction; on the other hand, the match was very unequal in opposing four thousand men to thirteen thousand. There was, however, no room for hesitating, in the choice, and I was soon resolved to save the colony by a bold and desperate stroke or die, gloriously, sword in hand. I made everybody work hard all the night between the 7th and 8th July, cutting down trees to make an intrenchment (CCCC), which, when finished, was very weak, trifling, and could scarce serve as a breast-work to cover the troops.
The engineers, having cut off the branches, laid the trees upon a line on the heights, three or four of them placed horizontally one upon the other, which scarce made it above three feet high--so low that your soldiers might easily have jumped over it;--they made a line of the branches, at two paces distance, on the outside of the trenches (HH). It is certain that if the engineers had only thrown the trees with their heads outwards, and their branches sharpened in pricking points at their ends, it would have made a much stronger intrenchment, more difficult to be forced, and built much sooner.[C] I had not the time to continue the trenches down to the hollow (DD), at the foot of the height, and I placed there two companies of grenadiers.
The hollow upon the right of the height, where the intrenchment was the worst of all my lines, was the post of the companies of marines (C); the regiments lined the rest of the trenches. Next day, the 8th of July, the English army appeared on the borders of the woods, about three hundred fathoms from the front of our intrenchment on the height, and instantly advanced to the attack, formed in three columns (EE), without halting a moment to examine the _locale_. Two of the columns attacked the height with the utmost impetuosity, but being very soon entangled among the branches, on the outside of the trenches, and impeded by them, they lost there a great many men; some few got through and, jumping into our trenches, were killed by our soldiers with their bayonets.
The American riflemen were posted on two heights (GG), which commanded our trenches, from whence they saw sideways in some parts of them, and in others the rear of the soldiers (K).
The regiment of Berry was, above all others, worried and tormented by their fire--one of these heights being scarce above eighty paces from the intrenchments. The third column attacked the hollow upon our right; but receiving a brisk fire at its front from the colony troops, and at the same time upon its right flank from the regiments on the height, the column soon wavered, wheeled to the right, and, presenting its front to the height, got out of the reach of the fire from the right of the colony troops; upon which M. Raymond, who commanded them, went out of the trenches with the right wing of these troops, and attacked the left flank of the column, whilst its head and right flank were fired at from the height and from the left of the colony troops in the trenches.
The column, distressed by this firing, yet, nevertheless, keeping firm at the foot of the height, put in disorder the regiment of Berry, who abandoned that part of the intrenchment (II) above it.
The moment I perceived the disorder, I ran there, encouraged the soldiers of the regiment, made them return to their post, and supported them by the grenadiers, whom I had kept in order of battle, at a small distance from the trenches, as a reserve, to be employed wherever the line might be forced by your troops, to charge upon them headlong, their bayonets upon their muskets, without firing: having neglected nothing that the short time allowed me to do, in order to make a vigorous defence--without aught to reproach myself with--had I been overpowered by your army; and having always preserved coolness and presence of mind so as to be able to remedy immediately any disorders during this long and well disputed attack.
General Abercrombie was at last obliged to retire, after having continued for some hours, with the greatest obstinacy, his attempt to force our intrenchments,--with the loss of two thousand men.[D]
I acquitted myself of my duty: this always affords a sweet satisfaction in all the events of life; and, even to the vanquished and unfortunate, it must yield great comfort and consolation. I had only twelve hours to prepare to defend myself with five thousand men against thirteen thousand.
How can General Abercrombie's rash and blind conduct be accounted for, for attacking us without examining or knowing our position? It is astonishing.
During twelve hours that he remained at the Chûte after landing there, he had time to send and examine the ground round the fort Ticonderoga; and they might have had a perfect knowledge of our position from a hill, covered with big trees, on the opposite side of the river of the Chûte (P);[E] this hill was much higher than any part of our intrenchments, and not a musket shot from them; he might have gone there himself with safety, having that river between us.