A. W. Ward

“ Loudon was of a desponding nature, and acquired a reputation for dilatoriness and other failings that was perhaps not fully deserved. The summer was consumed in strengthening Forts Edward and William Henry and in building the vast fleet of boats necessary for advancing down Lake George against the French, whose great fortress of Carillon or Ticonderoga, at the narrow entrance to Lake Champlain, bade defiance to the British and filled the surrounding forests with fierce bands of marauding scalp-hunting warriors, both red and white. ”

“ Absolute power lodged in the wise hands of a Colbert, even of a Seignelay or a Pontchartrain, gave scope for ideas undreamed of in England. In Biuke’s opinion “obedience to a wise government serves the French colonists for personal wisdom”; and the dangers involved in such exchange were not at first obvious. Absolute power had faith in the future, passed over questions of profit and loss, silenced or ignored the old grumble that the colonies did not enrich France. Policy, not commerce, dictated the retention of the St Lawrence, the Lakes and the Mississippi ”

“ Its immediate effect was enormously to increase, among the Indians, the prestige that the French by their activity had already been acquiring, and to hurl on the defenceless frontiers of the middle and southeni colonies a horde of savages, thirsting for scalps and eager for blood.
Two expeditions of less import were undertaken this year in the North. War had not yet been formally declared between France and England; but, when Braddock’s corps was despatched from Cork, France answered the challenge by sending 3000 soldiers to Canada. ”

“ The British colonists, he says, are opulent, with the appearance of not profiting by their wealth, while the Canadians conceal their poverty under an air of comfort. The Canadian enjoys all he has and often makes a show of having more than he has. The British colonist strives for his heir. The Canadian is content if he leaves his sons no worse off than he was at the beginning of life. The British Americans will not have war, for they have too much to lose; the French Canadian detests peace. ”

“ But all French subjects taken since the war began were to be restored; each prisoner so delivered was to release from his parole a member of the garrison. The fort was then abandoned for a large entrenchment near by which had been included in the defence.
It was at the evacuation of this temporary refuge that the bloody scene was enacted which has stained Montcalm’s memory. The Indians, though they had joined in the agreement, could not tolerate the sight of vanquished enemies marching off, not merely with their lives and scalps, but with their clothes, arms and small possessions. ”

“ Whereas alarmists saw the French work already accomplished, others foresaw that it would take a hundred years to make the French scheme a reality. With Canada, Louisiana and half St Domingo under one power, and Spain in alliance, it was thought that Jamaica and Cuba would next be absorbed, and that the English would be driven from the New World. The very dispersal of the scanty French population seemed to magnify their strength, for, like the Iroquois, they could give trouble out of all proportion to their numbers. ”

“ The Jesuit father’s reflexion, “should we at last die of misery how great our happiness will be,” animated men to endure hideous mutilations and agonising sufferings at the hands of the Indian enemy, and made them indifferent to starvation, thirst, fatigue and the torments of Canadian forest travel. Women too crowded to the new country in order to deny themselves the pleasures of the old, to tend the Indians dying of small-pox, and to teach Indian girls to seek with them the crown of virginity. ”

“ For the extension and support of such a system the Canadian peasantry, ignorant, superstitious, hardy, well treated, after the fashion of children, were admirable instruments. Every man was by law a soldier of the backwoods type, and, moreover, was prepared to rally to the national cause with unquestioning obedience and without expectation of pay, and to march with equal readiness against either Indian or English heretic. ”

“ There were as yet few British regulars in America. The newly arrived 35th and Braddock’s survivors were almost all that Loudon had at his disposal. But an army of several thousand provincials, mostly New Englanders, had taken the field, and were gathered under his orders. Except that they could handle a gun and possessed as much courage as could be expected without discipline, never was a people more calculated to be the despair of a commander than the Americans of that day. ”

“ With no Huguenot exodus to parallel the twenty years’ Puritan exodus, the French colonies depended for their origin on a mere handful of men and women, despatched many of them against their will and kept in the colonies by compulsion. ”

“ The first period of Frontenac’s government, 1672-82, had given him no opportunity of showing his real strength; for the vexatious struggle carried on between him and the intendant, whose rivalry he could not brook, had ended in the governor’s recall. But when danger of the most serious kind threatened the colony,Frontenac’s masterfulness and his extraordinary influence with the Indians pointed him out as the one man capable of facing the situation. The new danger arose once more from the power of the Iroquois. ”

“ He could pound it with artillery and reduce the country outside the walls and the Beauport lines. For the rest he must trust to fortune and inspiration. He planted, though not immediately, a camp and batteries, where the Montmorency meets the St Lawrence, facing across the former stream the left wing of Montcalm’s entrenched lines. On the point of the island of Orleans, looking over to the city four miles distant, he had another camp, while the heights of Point Levis, confronting Quebec at a distance of less than a mile across the narrowed channel, were the obvious spot for his main batteries. ”

“ Intendant Hocquart writes, in 1737, that they have not the coarse and rustic appearance of French peasants; the industrial arts not being restricted by trade organisations, and mechanics being scarce, each man is his own manufacturer and mechanic, and thus the idle hours of the long winter are employed. The gentry suffered more than the poor from the high price of the luxuries to which they were accustomed; and, as there was, according to Charlevoix, a larger noblesse in Canada than in all the other colonies put together, the colony lost reputation accordingly. ”

“ British traders found in the Indian settlements were summarily expelled and letters written to the British authorities professing surprise that British subjects should be found poaching on French territory. The French were beyond a doubt less distasteful to the Indians than their rivals. They had more natural genius for winning the affection of the natives, and had no desire to settle their lands to the detriment of the game. ”

“ The troops had no winter clothes, and their pay was greatly in arrear: Quebec was almost in ruins and afforded miserable shelter. There was neither fresh meat nor vegetables; the harassed fire-scourged neighbourhood was itself half starving, and wood-chopping parties were continually attacked by disbanded militia- men and hostile Indians. The city too was most vulnerable from the Heights of Abraham, to which the French from the direction of Montreal had ready access. ”

“ The opinion prevails that the Spaniards made on the whole the best masters of slaves, as being less commercially minded, more inclined to sympathize with indolence, more lenient on the colour question, and more successful in making permanent homes in tropical countries where the English and Fi’ench lived but temporarily. The Mulatto population in the French colonies generally bore a larger proportion to the white than in the British. In the French Antilles the presence of a large number of priests, of various and rival orders, insured the permanent existence of an element of civilisation. ”

“ Ships that came to Canada laden with French goods sought a return ceirgo by going to the West Indies, taking in perhaps some coal at Cape Breton to be used in the sugar refineries of the islands. Nothing had been made even of the pitch and tar industry. The colonists engaged in a few of the roughest clothing industries, but on a scale so small as to escape the jealousy of the manufacturers of the mother-country. The Canadian Council vainly sought to secure the clearing of lands by ordering that those not actually occupied should be surrendered ”

“ The English Revolution gave the opportunity for attack; and Canada with a population of some 12,000 prepared to pit herself not only against New York, with a mixed population of some 18,000, but also against New England with a fairly united population seven or eight times as large as her own. That New York would fall was thought to be sufficiently within the range of possibilities to make it worth while to sketch a whole scheme of government for the conquered province, in which Protestants were not to be allowed to live. ”

“ What is true of Canada may not be true of St Domingo; what is true of the missionary epoch may not be true of the mercantile. Yet certain broad featm’es distinguish French colonisation, which are notably absent from the schemes of the English on the one hand and of the Spanish on the other. In nothing is this more apparent than in the relations of the French to the native tribes occupying the North American continent. It is generally agreed that in relation to the natives the French showed themselves at their best. ”

“ As compared mth Canada, Acadia received little or no help from the home government. Its officials, too often men who had failed in Canada, produced the censuses and “ memoirs ” that were required of them; and the colony flourished rather in spite than because of their efforts, which were mainly directed to their own enrichment. The widely scattered population, settled in hamlets of some twenty persons each, found a congenial climate and soil, and, in their dependence on their own initiative, resembled rather an English colony in its early stages than a colony of New France. ”

“ In no respect was there greater divergence in the governmental systems of the British and French colonies than in the matter of taxation. While the British colonists as a rule taxed themselves heavily, both directly by poU-taxes, and indirectly by customs, and in nearly all cases bore the whole expense of government, the French were not suffered to tax themselves. The King kept taxation as the most carefully guarded sovereign right; the Crown bore the expense of govern- ment and paid all salaries; the colonies contributed direct to the Crown through the Domaine d'Occident. ”

“ Through a week the roar of artillery, the rattle of musketry, and the wild war-whoops of the Indians W'oke fierce echoes in the mountain gorges round Lake George. The defenders’ ammunition was nearly exliausted, their wretched cannon had burst or were dismounted. Sickness was raging, and the French trenches, armed with heavy artillery, had been pushed close to the ramparts. Entirely surrounded, cut off from sup- plies, Loudon being on the Atlantic and Webb hemmed in, Munro agreed to the inevitable capitulation. Canada could scarcely feed her own people and troops ”

“ The steady movement westward to a warmer climate and more fertile comlands was not supplied by French emigrants, as de la Gallissoniere hoped it might he, but by the Canadians themselves. The number of hunters in the upper country, who could not be relied upon as part of the militia, had steadily increased to some 8000, and almost even' colonist was more or less engaged in trading with the Indians. During the years of peace that followed the Treaty of Utrecht, a road was opened from Quebec to Montreal, and the fortifications of both towns were increased. ”

“ On the other hand, the difference between the circumstances of the French and those of the Spaniards in the New World led to a marked diversity in their relations with the Indians. The northern Indians were not conquered until they were almost exterminated; and neither France nor Great Britain ever had under their rule a vast subject Indian population, yielding tribute and forced labour. ”

“ The King found the money; the colonists were at any rate anxious to fight, however they might differ on other matters; and when the commander-in-chief gave the signal, every Canadian, without hope of pay, was ready to march with the French regiments, only anxious to prove his perennial though vain boast, that he was a better soldier than the regulars and equal to three Englishmen. 8000 men, including six royal regiments and a large body of the marine or colonial regulars, were at Ticonderoga in July. Montcalm was there himself, with the able de Levis as second in command. ”

“ The French work proceeded far more rapidly on the Mississippi than on the St Lawrence, for climate and soil offered no hindrance, and the imbounded range of Indian trade allowed scope for those qualities in which the French colonist proved himself strongest. But to establish dominion something more is needed than a full recognition of the possibilities of the future. ”

“ The burden of defence was great when the danger of Indian raids grew serious; and agriculture was not as a rule carried on except in close proximity to the three forts.
The men to whom emigration offered the greatest attraction during this period were not those who sought to found a family or fortune, but those who sought the crown of martyrdom, or, if life at all, a life of religious devotion and perpetual celibacy. Monastic sentiment found in the French colonies a remarkable revival. ”

“ Early in April, 1760, de Levis with a force of twice that number moved up to the attack. Montcalm, surrounded by a friendly country, had failed to hold Quebec against numbers far inferior. Murray, in the midst of an unfriendly one, had now to hold it against a force more than twice the strength of his own. The British general however went out to meet de Levis, and on April 28 fought the battle of St Foy, just beyond the plains of Abraham, in which the loss of life was greater than in the more famous fight of the preceding September. ”

“ From 1664 to 1683 the colony was nursed with the utmost care by Colbert. He directed the governor and the intendant alike to encourage the export of charcoal, tar, potash, to sow hemp and flax, to foster a trade with the French West Indies, and to encourage Canadian shipping, sedentary fisheries, mining, the breeding of cattle and the clearing of forest land. His instinctive bent was industrial rather than agricultural; but he saw that Canada needed development in every direction. In 1679 the total number of arpents cleared was put at 21,900, the population at 9400. ”