Part 5

The Marquis of Montcalm, endeavouring to rally the troops in their disorderly flight, was wounded in the lower part of the belly.[K] He was conveyed immediately to Quebec, and lodged in the house of M. Arnoux, the King's surgeon, who was absent with M. de Bourlamarque: his brother--the younger Arnoux--having viewed the wound, declared it mortal. This truly great and worthy man heard Arnoux[L] pronounce his sentence of death with a firm and undaunted soul: his mind calm and serene; his countenance soft and pleasing; and with a look of indifference whether he lived or died. He begged of Arnoux to be so kind and outspoken as to tell him how many hours he thought he might yet live? Arnoux answered him, that he might hold out until three in the morning. He spent that short period of life in conversing with a few officers upon indifferent subjects with great coolness and presence of mind, and ended his days about the hour Arnoux had foretold him. His last words were:--"I die[M] content, since I leave the affairs of the King, my dear master, in good hands: I always had a high opinion of the talents of M. de Levis." I will not undertake the panegyric of this great man: a true patriot and lover of his king and country, possessing many rare and good qualities. Had he by chance been born in England, his memory would have been celebrated, and transmitted with honour to posterity. Illustrious by his virtue and genius, he deserves to live in history; he was an unfortunate victim to the insatiable avarice of some men, and a prey to the immoderate ambition of others. His ashes, mingled with those of Indians, repose neglected far from his native country, without a magnificent tomb or altars; General Wolfe has statues in England in commemoration of the many faults he committed during his expedition in Canada. "How many obscure dead," says a modern author, "have received the greatest honours by titles yet more vain? O injustice of mankind! The mausolea adorn the temples to repeat continually false praise; and history, which ought to be the sacred asylum of truth, shows that statues and panegyrics are almost always the monuments of prejudice, and that flattery seeks to immortalise unjust reputations."

When I was informed of M. de Montcalm's misfortune, I sent him immediately his servant Joseph, begging him to acquaint me if I could be of any service to him, and in that case I would be with him at Quebec immediately. Joseph came back in a moment to the hornwork, and grieved me to the inmost of my soul by M. de Montcalm's answer: "that it was needless to come to him, as he had only a few hours to live, and he advised me to keep with Poularies until the arrival of M. de Levis at the army." Thus perished a great man, generally unknown and unregretted by his countrymen--a man who would have become the idol and ornament of any other country in Europe.

The French army in flight, scattered and entirely dispersed, rushed towards the town. Few of them entered Quebec; they went down the heights of Abraham, opposite to the Intendant's Palace (past St. John's gate) directing their course to the hornwork, and following the borders of the River St. Charles. Seeing the impossibility of rallying our troops, I determined myself to go down the hill at the windmill, near the bakehouse,[P] and from thence across over the meadows to the hornwork, resolved not to approach Quebec, from my apprehension of being shut up there with a part of our army, which might have been the case if the victors had drawn all the advantage they could have reaped from our defeat. It is true the death of the general-in-chief--an event which never fails to create the greatest disorder and confusion in an army--may plead as an excuse for the English neglecting so easy an operation as to take all our army prisoners.

But, instead of following immediately my ideas, I was carried off by the flow of the fugitives, without being able to stop them or myself until I got to a hollow swampy ground, where some gunners were endeavouring to save a field-piece which stuck there, and I stayed an instant with them to encourage them to draw it to the town. Returning back upon the rising ground, I was astonished to find myself in the centre of the English army, who had advanced whilst I was in the hollow with the gunners, and taking me for a general, on account of my fine black horse, they treated me as such by saluting me with a thousand musket shots from half of the front of their army, which had formed a crescent. I was, nevertheless, bent on reaching the windmill, and I escaped their terrible fire without any other harm than four balls through my clothes, which shattered them; a ball lodged in the pommel of my saddle, and four balls in my horse's body, who lived, notwithstanding his wounds, until he had carried me to the hornwork.

It is impossible to imagine the disorder and confusion that I found in the hornwork.[Q] The dread and consternation was general. M. de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always of the advice of he who spoke last. No order was given with reflection and with coolness, none knowing what to order or what to do. When the English had repulsed the two hundred Canadians that had gone up the height at the same time that I came down from it, pursuing them down to the bakehouse, our men lost their heads entirely; they became demoralized, imagining that the English troops, then at the bakehouse, would in an instant cross the plain and fly over the St. Charles river into the hornwork as with wings. It is certain that when fear once seizes hold of men it not only deprives them totally of their judgment and reflection, but also of the use of their eyes and their ears, and they become a thousand times worse than the brute creation, guided by instinct only, or by that small portion of reason which the author of nature has assigned it, since it preserves the use of it on all occasions. How much inferior to them do the greater portion of mankind appear, with their boasted reason, when reduced to madness and automata, on occasions when they require the more the use of their reason.

The hornwork had the River St. Charles before it, about seventy paces broad, which served it better than an artificial ditch; its front, facing the river and the heights, was composed of strong, thick, and high palisades, planted perpendicularly, with gunholes pierced for several pieces of large cannon in it; the river is deep and only fordable at low water, at a musket shot before the fort. This made it more difficult to be forced on that side than on its other side of earthworks facing Beauport, which had a more formidable appearance; and the hornwork certainly on that side was not in the least danger of being taken by the English, by an assault from the other side of the river. On the appearance of the English troops on the plain of the bakehouse, Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the Regiment of Bearn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil, "that the hornwork would be taken in an instant, by an assault, sword in hand; that we would be all cut to pieces without quarter, and that nothing else would save us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English."

Montreuil told them that "a fortification such as the hornwork was not to be taken so easily." In short, there arose a general cry in the hornwork to cut the bridge of boats.[R] It is worthy of remark, that not a fourth of our army had yet arrived at it, and the remainder, by cutting the bridge, would have been left on the other side of the river as victims to the victors. The regiment 'Royal Roussillon' was at that moment at the distance of a musket shot from the hornwork, approaching to pass the bridge. As I had already been in such adventures, I did not lose my presence of mind, and having still a shadow remaining of that regard, which the army accorded me on account of the esteem and confidence which M. de Levis and M. de Montcalm had always shown me publicly, I called to M. Hugon, who commanded, for a pass in the hornwork, and begged of him to accompany me to the bridge. We ran there, and without asking who had given the order to cut it, we chased away the soldiers with their uplifted axes ready to execute that extravagant and wicked operation.

M. de Vaudreuil was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork with the Intendant and with some other persons. I suspected they were busy drafting the articles for a general capitulation, and I entered the house, where I had only time to see the Intendant with a pen in his hand writing upon a sheet of paper, when M. de Vaudreuil told me I had no business there. Having answered him that what he said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath, to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependency for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had been expended. On leaving the house, I met M. Dalquier, an old, brave, downright honest man, commander of the regiment of Bearn, with the true character of a good officer--the marks of Mars all over his body. I told him it was being debated within the house, to give up Canada to the English by a capitulation, and I hurried him in to stand up for the King's cause, and advocate the welfare of his country. I then quitted the hornwork to join Poularies at the Ravine[S] of Beauport; but having met him about three or four hundred paces from the hornwork, on his way to it, I told him what was being discussed there. He answered me, that sooner than consent to a capitulation, he would shed the last drop of his blood. He told me to look on his table and house as my own, advised me to go there directly to repose myself, and clapping spurs to his horse, he flew like lightning to the hornwork.

As Poularies was an officer of great bravery, full of honour and of rare merit, I was then certain that he and Dalquier would break up the measures of designing men. Many motives induced me to act strenuously for the good of the service; amongst others, my gratitude for the Sovereign who had given me bread; also, my affection and inviolable friendship for M. de Levis in his absence, who was now Commander-in-Chief of the French armies in Canada by the death of M. de Montcalm. I continued sorrowfully jogging on to Beauport, with a very heavy heart for the loss of my dear friend, M. de Montcalm, sinking with weariness and lost in reflection upon the changes which Providence had brought about in the space of three or four hours.

Poularies came back to his lodgings at Beauport about two in the afternoon, and he brought me the agreeable news of having converted the project of a capitulation into a retreat to Jacques-Cartier, there to wait the arrival of M. de Levis; and they despatched a courier immediately to Montreal to inform him of our misfortune at Quebec, which, to all appearance, would not have happened to us if M. de Vaudreuil had not sent him away, through some political reason, to command there, without troops except those who were with M. de Bourlamarque at L'Isle aux Noix--an officer of great knowledge. The departure of the army was agreed upon to be at night, and all the regiments were ordered to their respective encampments until further orders. The decision for a retreat was to be kept a great secret, and not even communicated to the officers. I passed the afternoon with Poularies, hoping each moment to receive from Montreuil--Major-General of the army--the order of the retreat for the regiment Royal Roussillon; but having no word of it at eight o'clock in the evening, and it being a dark night, Poularies sent his Adjutant to M. de Vaudreuil to receive his orders for the left. Poularies instantly returned to inform him that the right of our army was gone away with M. de Vaudreuil without his having given any orders concerning the retreat, and that they followed the highway to the hornwork. Castaigné, his Adjutant, could give no further account of this famous retreat, only that all the troops on our right were marched off. It can be easily imagined how much we were confounded by this ignorant and stupid conduct, which can scarce appear credible to the most ignorant military man.

Poularies sent immediately to inform the post next to his regiment of the retreat, with orders to acquaint all the left of it, from post to post, between Beauport and the Sault de Montmorency.

I then set out with him and his regiment, following those before us as the other posts to our left followed us, without any other guides, orders or instructions with regard to the roads we should take, or where we should go to; this was left to chance, or at least was a secret which M. de Vaudreuil kept to himself _in petto_. It was a march entirely in the Indian manner; not a retreat, but a horrid, abominable flight, a thousand times worse than that in the morning upon the heights of Abraham, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to destroy and cut all our army to pieces. Except the regiment Royal Roussillon, which Poularies, always a rigid and severe disciplinarian, kept together in order, there were not to be seen thirty soldiers together of any other regiment. They were all mixed, scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army was at their heels. There never was a more favourable position to make a beautiful, well-combined retreat, in bright day, and in sight of the English Army looking at us, without having the smallest reason to fear anything within their power to oppose it, as I had obtained a perfect knowledge of the _locale_ from Beauport to the Sault de Montmorency during some months that I was there constantly with M. de Levis and M. de Montcalm. I thought myself in a position to foretell to Poularies the probable order of retreat, and the route which would be assigned to each regiment for their march to the Lorette village. I was greatly deceived, and indeed could never have foreseen the route which our entire army followed to reach Lorette, and which prolonged our march prodigiously for the centre of our army, and still more for our left at the Sault de Montmorency. There is a highway in a straight line from the Sault de Montmorency to Lorette, which makes a side of a triangle formed by another highway from the Sault to Quebec, and by another road from Lorette to the hornwork, which formed the base. In the highway from the Sault to the hornwork there are eight or nine cross roads of communication from it to the road from the Sault to Lorette, which are shorter as they approach to the point of the angle at the Sault. Thus it was natural to believe that our army, being encamped all along the road from the Sault to the hornwork, each regiment would have taken one of these cross roads, the nearest to his encampment, in order to take the straight road from the Sault to Lorette, instead of coming to the hornwork to take there the road from Quebec to Lorette, by which the left had double the distance to march, besides being more liable by approaching the hornwork so near to the English, to make them discover the retreat.

The army, by this operation, would have arrived all at the same time in the road from the Sault to Lorette by the difference in the length of these cross roads, and would have naturally formed a column all along that road; and as it was not a forced retreat, they had the time from twelve at noon until eight at night to send off all the baggage by cross roads to Lorette, without the English perceiving it; but supposing them even fully aware of our design, which might have been executed in open day, they no way could disturb our operations without attacking the hornwork, and attempting the passage of the river St. Charles--a very difficult and dangerous affair--where they might be easily repulsed, exposing themselves in a moment to lose the fruits of their victory, without enjoying it; and consequently they would have been insane had they ventured on such a rash enterprise. Instead of these wise measures, which common sense alone might have dictated, tents, artillery, the military stores, baggage, and all other effects, were left as a present to the English; the officers saved only a few shirts, or what they could carry in their pockets: the rest was lost. In fact, it would appear, by this strange conduct, that a class of men there, from interested views, were furiously bent on giving up the colony to the English, so soon as they could have a plausible pretext to colour their designs,--by lopping off gradually all the means possible to defend it any longer. M. de Vaudreuil had still other kind offices in reserve for the English. He wrote to de Ramsay, King's Lieutenant and Commander in Quebec,[T] as soon as the retreat was decided:--"That he might propose a capitulation for the town eight-and-forty hours after the departure of our army from our camp at Beauport, upon the best conditions he could obtain from the English." We ran along in flight all night; and at daybreak M. de Bougainville, with his detachment, joined us near Cap Rouge. In the evening, our army arrived at Pointe-aux-Trembles--five leagues from Quebec--where it passed the night, and next day came to Jacques-Cartier. The English had so little suspicion of our retreat, seeing our tents standing without any change at our camp, that Belcour--an officer of La Rochebaucourt's cavalry--having returned to it with a detachment, two days after our flight, he found everything the same as when we left it. He went into the hornwork with his detachment, and fired the guns (pointed) at the heights of Abraham towards the English camp, which greatly alarmed them.

FINIS.

[The remainder of the manuscript alludes more particularly to the campaign conducted by Chevalier de Levis, which ended, in 1760, by the capitulation of Montreal.]

ADDENDA.

_Extract of the Register of Marriages, Baptisms and Deaths of the French Cathedral at Quebec, for 1759_:--

"L'an mil sept cens cinquante-neuf, le quatorzième du mois de Septembre, a été inhumé dans l'Eglise des Religieuses Ursulines de Québec, haut et puissant Seigneur Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm, Lieutenant Général des armées du Roy, Commandeur de l'ordre Royal et militaire de St. Louis, Commandant en chef des troupes de terre en l'Amérique Septentrionale, décédé le même jour de ses blessures au combat de la veille, muni des sacrements qu'il a reçus avec beaucoup de piété et de Religion. Etoient présents à son inhumation MM. Resche, Cugnet et Collet, chanoines de la Cathédrale, M. de Ramezay, Commandant de la Place, et tout le corps des officiers.

(Signé,) "RESCHE, Ptre. Chan. "COLLET, Chne."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Les Ecossais en France, Vol. II., P. 449.

[B] Formerly, inward bound ships, instead of taking the south channel lower down than Goose Island, struck over from Cape Tourmente, and took the south channel between Madame Island and Pointe Argentenay.

[C] General Abercrombie's army consisted of 6,000 regular troops and 7,000 provincials, according to the English; but the French gave them out to be 6,300 troops, and 13,000 provincials--in all 19,300 men.

[D] The French say the English lost between four and five thousand men.

[E] Unfortunately, the plans here alluded to do not accompany the manuscript.

[F] This contest is generally denominated the Battle of the Monongahela. Capt. Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu commanded the Canadians, and achieved a most brilliant victory over General Braddock and George Washington; the English losing their provisions, baggage, fifteen cannon, many small arms, the military chest, Braddock's papers. Washington, after the battle, wrote: "We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of French."--(J. M. L.)

[G] De Vergor's post apparently stood about a 100 yards to the east of the spot on which Wolfe's Field-cottage has since been built. The ruins still exist.--(J. M. L.)

[H] De Vergor's guard was composed chiefly of Militiamen from Lorette, who on that day had obtained leave to go and work on their farms, provided they also worked on a farm Captain De Vergor owned.--"_Mémoires sur les Affaires de la Colonie de 1749-60._" Some historians have intimated that De Vergor--a _protége_ of Bigot's--was a traitor to his King.--(J. M. L.)

[I] I incline more to General Wolfe's opinion than what Voltaire reports in the war of 1781, to have been the King of Prussia's maxim:--"That we ought always to do what the enemy is afraid of." Where the enemy is afraid of anything in particular, he has there his largest force, and is there more on his guard than anywhere else.--(MANUSCRIPT NOTE.)

[J] Bigot's coterie.--(J. M. L.)

[K] It was reported in Canada, that the ball which killed that great, good and honest man, was not fired by an English musket. But I never credited this.

[L] Arnoux gave me this account of his last moments.--MANUSCRIPT NOTES.

[M] The place where Montcalm died appears yet shrouded in doubt. It is stated, in Knox's Journal, that, on being wounded, Montcalm was conveyed to the General Hospital, towards which the French squadrons in retreat had to pass to regain, over the bridge of boats, their camp at Beauport. The General Hospital was also the head-quarters of the wounded--both English and French. It has been supposed that Arnoux's house, where Montcalm was conveyed, stood in St. Louis street. No where does it appear that Montcalm was conveyed to his own residence on the ramparts (on which now stands the residence of R. H. Wurtele, Esquire). As the city surrendered five days after the great battle, it was likely to be bombarded--and, moreover, one-third of the houses in it had been burnt and destroyed--we do not see why the wounded General should have been conveyed from the battle-field to the Château St. Louis--certainly an exposed situation in the event of a new bombardment; and, moreover, the city itself, after and during the battle, was considered so insecure that the French army, instead of retreating to it for shelter, hurried past the General Hospital, over the bridge, to their camp at Beauport. There is a passage in Lieutenant-Colonel Beatson's Notes on the Plains of Abraham, which we give:--"The valiant Frenchman (Montcalm), regardless of pain, relaxed not his efforts to rally his broken battalions in their hurried retreat towards the city until he was shot through the loins, when within a few hundred yards of St. Louis Gate.[N] And so invincible was his fortitude that not even the severity of this mortal stroke could abate his gallant spirit or alter his intrepid bearing. Supported by two grenadiers--one at each side of his horse--he re-entered the city; and in reply to some women who, on seeing blood flow from his wounds as he rode down St. Louis street, on his way to the Château, exclaimed: _Oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le Marquis est tuê!!!_ he courteously assured them that he was not seriously hurt, and begged of them not to distress themselves on his account.--_Ce n'est rien! ce n'est rien! Ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies._"[O]