Montcalm

“ Montcalm heard the outburst of firing at the Cote d'Abraham. But he knew that all was over now, that Canada was lost, and with it all he had fought for so nobly, so wisely, and so well. As he rode through St Louis Gate, with the two grenadiers holding him up in his saddle, a terrified woman shrieked out: 'Oh! look at the marquis, he's killed, he's killed!' 'It is nothing at all, my kind friend,' answered Montcalm, trying to sit up straight, 'you must not be so much alarmed!' Five minutes later the doctor told him he had only a few hours to live. 'So much the better,' he replied ”

“ It is from his quick eye and eager pen that we learn much of the inner story of these last days of New France. Montcalm discusses frankly in his letters these and other officers, with whom he was on the whole well pleased. In his heart he could echo the words of Bougainville as he watched the brilliant spectacle of the embarkation at Brest: “What a nation is ours! Happy is he who leads and is worthy of it.” ”

“ Webb would not move. Montcalm was able to knock the whole place to pieces and destroy the garrison. On the 9th the white flag went up. Montcalm granted the honours of war. The British were to march off the next morning to Fort Edward, carrying their arms, and under escort of a body of French regulars. Every precaution was taken to keep the Indians from committing any outrage. Montcalm assembled them, told them the terms, and persuaded them to promise obedience. He took care to keep all strong drink out of their way, and asked Monro to destroy all the liquor in the British fort and camp. ”

“ Montcalm knew what daring could accomplish, but even he had not dreamed of daring such as this. Wolfe, with a great soul kindled into flame by the resolve to achieve a feat almost beyond mortal limitations, dared it, and prevailed.
Till the hour of action, he kept his troops far up the stream. By the 13th, all preparations were made. Night came on, calm, like the heart of the hero who knows that the culminating moment of his destiny has arrived. At such a crisis, the mortal part of the man is transfigured by the towering spirit, and his eyes pierce through the veils of things. ”

“ What! with a father in the position of the marquis to assist you?" rejoined Montcalm. "There is no man whom I would more willingly believe, or more willingly assist, but——"
"General Montcalm will have the goodness to remember that I have neither sought nor solicited his assistance," answered Isidore, haughtily.
"I do not forget it, sir," was the reply, "indeed it is that which justifies my doubts. I, at all events, am not changed, and if Monsieur de Beaujardin has nothing to reproach himself with, he may without scruple claim both sympathy and assistance from me." ”

“ As they learn with dread amazement
Wolfe has climbed to Abraham’s Plains,
And has made his dispositions
With lightning strategy and pains.
But Montcalm, the heroic Montcalm,
Though o’erwhelmèd by surprise,
Issues swift his ringing orders
As from point to point he flies.{155}
And there was blaring then of trumpets,
And the roar of trampling feet,
And tumultuous preparations
Their stern awaiting foes to meet.
Ha! they issue forth in swift, hot haste,
And form upon the noble plain,
A chivalry worthy any cause,
Their country’s laurels to maintain. ”

“ A single British gun was firing grape-shot straight into the French left and cutting down a great many men. But the thin red line itself was silent; silent as the grave and steadfast as a wall. Presently the substitutes in the Languedoc battalion could not endure the strain any longer. They fired without orders and could not be stopped. At the same time Montcalm saw that his five little bodies of men were drifting apart. When the Canadian regulars had moved off, they had left the French flanks quite open. ”

“ It was in this spirit of confidence that Montcalm faced the struggle in America. For him sad days were to come and his sunny, vivacious, southern temperament caused him to suffer keenly. At first, however, all was full of brilliant promise. So eager was he that, when his ships lay becalmed in the St. Lawrence some thirty miles below Quebec, he landed and drove to the city. It is the most beautiful country in the world, he writes, highly cultivated, with many houses, the peasants living more like the lesser gentry of France than like peasants, and speaking excellent French. ”

“ The Marquis de Montcalm, the newly appointed commander of the forces in Canada, arrived about the middle of May, bringing with him the Chevalier de Lévis, Bourlamaque, and Bougainville, all of them [Pg 247] better generals than those to whom the fatuous Duke of Newcastle entrusted the leadership of the English army. Montcalm himself is indeed one of the most heroic and gallant figures in French Canadian history—the personage, par excellence, of the closing chapter of French dominion. ”

“ Montcalm:​—​I am much obliged to you, sir, for your favourable opinion of me. Let us leave weak mortals to crawl from error to error, and deify to-day what they will condemn to-morrow. It is at present, when the darkness is dispelled from before our eyes, that we can contemplate at leisure the passions of men, who move as the waves of the sea, push on each other and often break upon the rocks; and in our present state, when all prejudices are at an end, let us examine impartially the operations of 1759, which was the epocha of the loss to France of her northern colonies in America. ”

“ But Montcalm made the best of it: 'a little is precious to those who have nothing.'
Bougainville brought out plenty of promotions and honours for the victory at Ticonderoga. Montcalm was made lieutenant-general of the king in Canada. Bougainville told him his name was known all over France; 'even the children use it in their games.' Old Marshal Belle Isle, a gallant veteran, now at the head of the French army, and a great admirer of Montcalm, had sent out the king's last orders: 'No matter how small the space may be that you can retain, you must somehow keep a foothold in America ”

“ Even had Nature made him less suspicious, his relations with the General would have been critical. Montcalm commanded the regulars from France, whose very presence was in the eyes of Vaudreuil an evil, though a necessary one. Their chief was, it is true, subordinate to him in virtue of his office of governor; [368] yet it was clear that for the conduct of the war the trust of the Government was mainly in Montcalm; and the Minister of War had even suggested that he should have the immediate command, not only of the troops from France, but of the colony regulars and the militia. ”

“ Isidore bowed slightly, but made no other answer.
Montcalm was silent for a minute or so, and fidgeted with his sword-knot, though he kept his eyes intently fixed on his quondam aide-de-camp.
"Monsieur de Beaujardin," said he at length, with his usual rapidity of utterance, "I believe you know as well as any one that I have always held that men seldom lose caste and come down in the world without some fault of their own. ”

“ John, hastening, always hastening, to join the battalion of Guienne, which already stood in its white uniforms and beneath its banners on the Buttes-a-Neveu.
Montcalm's army included the veterans of many victories. Through long years they had fought valiantly for France in North America. At Ticonderoga they had shown how they could triumph over great odds, over men as brave as themselves, and, as they pressed through the narrow streets of the quaint old town, they did not doubt that they were going to another victory. ”

“ The news had just reached the city, and as the French commander looked towards the Plains of Abraham, spying them through his glass, he saw that it was only too true.
"At last," he said, "they have outwitted us, these fine Englishmen and their persevering leader. They are waiting for our soldiers. I must go."
In his own heart Montcalm knew in what a desperate plight he and his force were, for he had already learned that the enemy who had for so long faced the city were trained men, veterans, determined to win. ”

“ They had made Louisbourg safer than ever; the British fleet and army had not even dared to attack it. French power had never been so widespread. The fleurs-de-lis floated over the whole of the valleys of the St Lawrence, Ohio, and Mississippi, as well as over the Great Lakes, where these three valleys meet. But this great show of strength depended on the army of Montcalm—that motley host behind whose dauntless front everything was hollow and rotten to the last degree. The time was soon to come when even the bravest of armies could no longer stand against lions in front and jackals behind. ”

“ The chance seemed favourable. Montcalm knew he had to fight or starve, as he was completely cut off by land and water, except for one bad, swampy road in the valley of the St Charles; and he ordered his line to advance.
At half-past nine the French reached the crest and halted. The two armies were now in full view of each other on the Plains and only a quarter of a mile apart. The French line of battle had eight small battalions, about 2,500 men, formed six deep. The colonial regulars, in three battalions, were on the flanks. The five battalions of French regulars were in the centre. ”

“ Montcalm’s popularity with the colonists and with the Indians was another cause for Vaudreuil’s displeasure. The General was incapable of dissimulation, and as he had received full military power, he was naturally impatient of interference, and showed it. His second officer, Chevalier Levis, was far more popular: he ingratiated himself with all the government men—Vaudreuil, Bigot, Varin, etc. He knew exactly what they were worth; but, as he observed to Montcalm more than once, “We shall not make them better by opposition; all we have to do is to make use of them.” ”

“ The French were soon overpowered by numbers, and the fifty or so survivors were glad to scurry off into the bush. But they had dealt one mortal blow. Lord Howe had fallen, and, with him, the head and heart of the whole British force.
Abercromby, a helpless leader, pottered about all the next day, not knowing what to do. Meanwhile Montcalm kept his men hard at work, and by night he was ready and hopeful. He had just written to his friend Doreil, the commissary of war at Quebec: 'We have only eight days' provisions. I have no Canadians and no Indians. The British have a very strong army. ”

“ Those that arrived were in as real a sense captured, for they were stolen by the Bigot gang, and did not fulfil the purpose of holding the Indian allies. 'If,' said Montcalm, in one of his despairing letters to the minister, 'if all the presents that the king sends out to the Indians were really given to them, we should have every tribe in America on our own side.'
The Canadians were robbed even more; and they and the Canadian regulars were set against Montcalm and the French by every lie that Vaudreuil could speak in Canada or write to France. ”

“ So far Montcalm had maintained a defensive attitude in the Richelieu valley, but taking advantage of Loudon's diversion towards Louisbourg, he now resolved upon attacking Fort William Henry, strongly held by over two thousand English troops. Moving out of his intrenchments at Carillon, therefore, and supported by Lévis and Bougainville, he advanced up the valley with six thousand soldiers and over a thousand Indians. Monro, the British commandant, sharply rejected the summons to surrender, and Montcalm began the investment of the fort. ”

“ A rugged and dangerous path was used at night up those very heights which, Montcalm confidently believed, "a hundred men could easily defend against the whole British army." On the morning of the 13th September, 1759, Wolfe marshalled an army of four thousand five hundred men on the Plains of Abraham where he was soon face to face with the French army. Montcalm had lost no time in accepting the challenge of the English, in the hope that his superior numbers would make up for their inferiority in discipline and equipment compared with the smaller English force. ”

“ Montcalm made several judicious propositions, one being that soldiers should be dispersed into those villages where none were as yet quartered, and that the example of frugality, and retrenchment should be immediately set by himself, the governor general, the intendant and the others. This self-denying ordinance was at once generously acted upon. Writing to de Lévis next day, enclosing the open letter as above, Montcalm, speaking of the new régime of retrenchment, says: "All the colony applauds; the intendant not so much. He loves display." ”

“ Pell’s house, we were reminded of this date, these figures, and of their fine significance. We remembered that in this forest where we are, Montcalm in early morning, throwing off his jacket and crouching under the branches of a tree, said to his men who labored to gather the stones for the intrenchments, “Children, the day will be hot!” We recall that at evening in the same place, as the fading light of day was prolonged by the reflection of the lake, he wrote: “What a day for France! The little army of the King conquers his enemies. Ah, what troops like ours! ”

“ Your army did not amount to ten thousand men, and your camp extended seven or eight miles.
Montcalm:​—​I agree with you, and am sensible that the longer the line, the weaker it is in its several parts. I am convinced that it is impossible to prevent a line from being forced; and I believed likewise that, landing on a coast where there are several leagues of it to be defended, equally susceptible of descent, is the same case as lines. He who attacks has all his force concentrated at a single point, which he may choose as he pleases ”