THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE

A CHRONICLE OF THE COLONIAL WARS

By George M. Wrong

CONTENTS

 I. THE CONFLICT OPENS: FRONTENAC AND PHIPS II. QUEBEC AND BOSTON III. FRANCE LOSES ACADIA IV. LOUISBOURG AND BOSTON V. THE GREAT WEST VI. THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO VII. THE EXPULSION OF THE ACADIANS VIII. THE VICTORIES OF MONTCALM IX. MONTCALM AT QUEBEC X. THE STRATEGY OF PITT XI. THE FALL OF CANADA

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE

CHAPTER I. The Conflict Opens: Frontenac And Phips

Many centuries of European history had been marked by war almostceaseless between France and England when these two states firstconfronted each other in America. The conflict for the New World was butthe continuation of an age-long antagonism in the Old, intensified nowby the savagery of the wilderness and by new dreams of empire. Therewas another potent cause of strife which had not existed in theearlier days. When, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, theantagonists had fought through the interminable Hundred Years' War, theyhad been of the same religious faith. Since then, however, England hadbecome Protestant, while France had remained Catholic. When the rivalsfirst met on the shores of the New World, colonial America was stillvery young. It was in 1607 that the English occupied Virginia. Atthe same time the French were securing a foothold in Acadia, now NovaScotia. Six years had barely passed when the English Captain Argallsailed to the north from Virginia and destroyed the rising Frenchsettlements. Sixteen years after this another English force attackedand captured Quebec. Presently these conquests were restored. Franceremained in possession of the St. Lawrence and in virtual possession ofAcadia. The English colonies, holding a great stretch of the Atlanticseaboard, increased in number and power. New France also grew stronger. The steady hostility of the rivals never wavered. There was, indeed, little open warfare as long as the two Crowns remained at peace. From1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient totheir cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religiousfaith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denouncedthe new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, andattacked the English in America with a savage fury unknown in Europe. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with little more than pauses forrenewed preparation; and the conflict ended only when France yielded toEngland the mastery of her empire in America. It is the story of thisstruggle, covering a period of seventy years, which is told in thefollowing pages. 

The career of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, who was Governorof Canada from 1672 to 1682 and again from 1689 to his death in 1698, reveals both the merits and the defects of the colonizing genius ofFrance. Frontenac was a man of noble birth whose life had been spentin court and camp. The story of his family, so far as it is known, isa story of attendance upon the royal house of France. His father anduncles had been playmates of the young Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. The thoughts familiar to Frontenac in his youth remained with himthrough life; and, when he went to rule at Quebec, the very spirit thatdominated the court at Versailles crossed the sea with him. 

A man is known by the things he loves. The things which Frontenac mosthighly cherished were marks of royal favor, the ceremony due to his ownrank, the right to command. He was an egoist, supremely interested inhimself. He was poor, but at his country seat in France, near Blois, hekept open house in the style of a great noble. Always he bore himselfas one to whom much was due. His guests were expected to admire hisindifferent horses as the finest to be seen, his gardens as the mostbeautiful, his clothes as of the most effective cut and finish, theplate on his table as of the best workmanship, and the food as havingsuperior flavor. He scolded his equals as if they were naughty children. 

Yet there was genius in this showy court figure. In 1669, when theVenetian Republic had asked France to lend her an efficient soldierto lead against the rampant Turk, the great Marshal Turenne had chosenFrontenac for the task. Crete, which Frontenac was to rescue, the Turkindeed had taken; but, it is said, at the fearful cost of a hundredand eighty thousand men. Three years later, Frontenac had been sentto Canada to war with the savage Iroquois and to hold in check theaggressive designs of the English. He had been recalled in 1682, afterten years of service, chiefly on account of his arbitrary temper. Hehad quarreled with the Bishop. He had bullied the Intendant until atone time that harried official had barricaded his house and armed hisservants. He had told the Jesuit missionaries that they thought more ofselling beaver-skins than of saving souls. He had insulted thoseabout him, sulked, threatened, foamed at the mouth in rage, revealed achildish vanity in regard to his dignity, and a hunger insatiable formarks of honor from the King--"more grateful, " he once said, "thananything else to a heart shaped after the right pattern. "

France, however, now required at Quebec a man who could do the neededman's tasks. The real worth of Frontenac had been tested; and so, in1689, when England had driven from her shores her Catholic king and, when France's colony across the sea seemed to be in grave danger fromthe Iroquois allies of the English, Frontenac was sent again to Quebecto subdue these savages and, if he could, to destroy in America thepower of the age long enemy of his country. 

Perched high above the St. Lawrence, on a noble site where now is apublic terrace and a great hotel, stood the Chateau St. Louis, the sceneof Frontenac's rule as head of the colony. No other spot in the worldcommanded such a highway linking the inland waters with the sea. TheFrench had always an eye for points of strategic value; and in holdingQuebec they hoped to possess the pivot on which the destinies of NorthAmerica should turn. For a long time it seemed, indeed, as if thisglowing vision might become a reality. The imperial ideas which wereworking at Quebec were based upon the substantial realities oftrade. The instinct for business was hardly less strong in these keenadventurers than the instinct for empire. In promise of trade theinterior of North America was rich. Today its vast agriculture and itswealth in minerals have brought rewards beyond the dreams of two hundredyears ago. The wealth, however, sought by the leaders of that time camefrom furs. In those wastes of river, lake, and forest were the richestpreserves in the world for fur-bearing animals. 

This vast wilderness was not an unoccupied land. In those wild regionsdwelt many savage tribes. Some of the natives were by no means withoutpolitical capacity. On the contrary, they were long clever enough to pitEnglish against French to their own advantage as the real sovereignsin North America. One of them, whose fluent oratory had won for him thename of Big Mouth, told the Governor of Canada, in 1688, that his peopleheld their lands from the Great Spirit, that they yielded no lordship toeither the English or the French, that they well understood the weaknessof the French and were quite able to destroy them, but that they wishedto be friends with both French and English who brought to them theadvantages of trade. In sagacity of council and dignity of carriagesome of these Indians so bore themselves that to trained observers theyseemed not unequal to the diplomats of Europe. They were, however, weak before the superior knowledge of the white men. In all their longcenturies in America they had learned nothing of the use of iron. Theirsharpest tool had been made of chipped obsidian or of hammered copper. Their most potent weapons had been the stone hatchet or age and thebow and arrow. It thus happened that, when steel and gunpowder reachedAmerica, the natives soon came to despise their primitive implements. More and more they craved the supplies from Europe which multiplied in ahundred ways their strength in the conflict with nature and with man. Tothe Indian tribes trade with the French or English soon became a vitalnecessity. From the far northwest for a thousand miles to the bleakshores of Hudson Bay, from the banks of the Mississippi to the banksof the St. Lawrence and the Hudson, they came each year on laboriousjourneys, paddling their canoes and carrying them over portages, tobarter furs for the things which they must have and which the white manalone could supply. 

The Iroquois, the ablest and most resolute of the native tribes, heldthe lands bordering on Lake Ontario which commanded the approaches fromboth the Hudson and the St. Lawrence by the Great Lakes to the spaciousregions of the West. The five tribes known as the Iroquois had shownmarked political talent by forming themselves into a confederacy. Fromthe time of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, there had been troublebetween the French and the Iroquois. In spite of this bad beginning, the French had later done their best to make friends with the powerfulconfederacy. They had sent to them devoted missionaries, many of whommet the martyr's reward of torture and massacre. But the opposinginfluence of the English, with whom the Iroquois chiefly traded, provedtoo strong. 

With the Iroquois hostile, it was too dangerous for the French to travelinland by way of Lake Ontario. They had, it is true, a shorter and, indeed, a better route farther north, by way of the Ottawa River andLake Nipissing to Lake Huron. In time, however, the Iroquois made eventhis route unsafe. Their power was far-reaching and their ambitionlimitless. They aimed to be masters of North America. Like all virilebut backward peoples, they believed themselves superior to every otherrace. Their orators declared that the fate of the world was to turn ontheir policy. 

On Frontenac's return to Canada he had a stormy inheritance inconfronting the Iroquois. They had real grievances against France. Devonvine, Frontenac's predecessor, had met their treachery by treacheryof his own. Louis XIV had found that these lusty savages made excellentgalley slaves and had ordered Denonville to secure a supply in Canada. In consequence the Frenchman seized even friendly Iroquois and sentthem over seas to France. The savages in retaliation exacted a fearfulvengeance in the butchery of French colonists. The bloodiest story inthe annals of Canada is the massacre at Lachine, a village a fewmiles above Montreal. On the night of August 4, 1689, fourteen hundredIroquois burst in on the village and a wild orgy of massacre followed. All Canada was in a panic. Some weeks later Frontenac arrived at Quebecand took command. To the old soldier, now in his seventieth year, hishard task was not uncongenial. He had fought the savage Iroquois beforeand the no less savage Turk. He belonged to that school of militaryaction which knows no scruple in its methods, and he was prepared tomake war with all the frightfulness practised by the savages themselves. His resolute, blustering demeanor was well fitted to impress the red menof the forest, for an imperious eye will sometimes cow an Indian as wellas a lion, and Frontenac's mien was imperious. In his life in court andcamp he had learned how to command. 

The English in New York had professed to be brothers to the Iroquois andhad called them by that name. This title of equality, however, Frontenacwould not yield. Kings speak of "my people"; Frontenac spoke to theIndians not as his brothers but as his children and as children of thegreat King whom he served. He was their father, their protector, thedisposer and controller of mighty reserves of power, who loved and caredfor those putting their trust in him. He could unbend to play with theirchildren and give presents to their squaws. At times he seemed patient, gentle, and forgiving. At times, too, he swaggered and boasted in termswhich the event did not always justify. 

La Potherie, a cultivated Frenchman in Canada during Frontenac's regime, describes an amazing scene at Montreal, which seems to show that, whether Frontenac recognized the title or not, he had qualities whichmade him the real brother of the savages. In 1690 Huron and other Indianallies of the French had come from the far interior to trade and also toconsider the eternal question of checking the Iroquois. At the council, which began with grave decorum, a Huron orator begged the French to makeno terms with the Iroquois. Frontenac answered in the high tone which hecould so well assume. He would fight them until they should humbly cravepeace; he would make with them no treaty except in concert with hisIndian allies, whom he would never fail in fatherly care. To impress thecouncil by the reality of his oneness with the Indians, Frontenac nowseized a tomahawk and brandished it in the air shouting at the same timethe Indian war-song. The whole assembly, French and Indians, joined ina wild orgy of war passion, and the old man of seventy, fresh from thecourt of Louis XIV, led in the war-dance, yelled with the Indians theirsavage war-whoops, danced round the circle of the council, and showedhimself in spirit a brother of the wildest of them. This was gooddiplomacy. The savages swore to make war to the end under his lead. Manya frontier outrage, many a village attacked in the dead of night andburned, amidst bloody massacre of its few toil-worn settlers, was to bethe result of that strange mingling of Europe with wild America. 

Frontenac's task was to make war on the English and their Iroquoisallies. He had before him the King's instructions as to the means foreffecting this. The King aimed at nothing less than the conquest of theEnglish colonies in America. In 1664 the English, by a sudden blow intime of peace, had captured New Netherland, the Dutch colony on theHudson, which then became New York. Now, a quarter of a century later, France thought to strike a similar blow against the English, and LouisXIV was resolved that the conquest should be thoroughgoing. The Dutchpower had fallen before a meager naval force. The English now would haveto face one much more formidable. Two French ships were to cross the seaand to lie in wait near New York. Meanwhile from Canada, sixteen hundredarmed men, a thousand of them French regular troops, were to advance byland into the heart of the colony, seize Albany and all the boats thereavailable, and descend by the Hudson to New York. The warships, hoveringoff the coast, would then enter New York harbor at the same time thatthe land forces made their attack. The village, for it was hardly morethan this, contained, as the French believed, only some two hundredhouses and four hundred fighting men and it was thought that a monthwould suffice to complete this whole work of conquest. Once victors, the French were to show no pity. All private property, but that ofCatholics, was to be confiscated. Catholics, whether English or Dutch, were to be left undisturbed if not too numerous and if they would takethe oath of allegiance to Louis XIV and show some promise of keeping it. Rich Protestants were to be held for ransom. All the other inhabitants, except those whom the French might find useful for their own purposes, were to be driven out of the colony, homeless wanderers, to be scatteredfar so that they could not combine to recover what they had lost. WithNew York taken, New England would be so weakened that in time it toowould fall. Such was the plan of conquest which came from the brilliantchambers at Versailles. 

New York did not fall. The expedition so carefully planned came tonothing. Frontenac had never shown much faith in the enterprise. AtQuebec, on his arrival in the autumn of 1689, he was planning somethingless ideally perfect, but certain to produce results. The scarred oldcourtier intended so to terrorize the English that they should makeno aggressive advance, to encourage the French to believe themselvessuperior to their rivals, and, above all, to prove to the Indiantribes that prudence dictated alliance with the French and not with theEnglish. 

Frontenac wrote a tale of blood. There were three war parties; one setout from Montreal against New York, and one from Three Rivers and onefrom Quebec against the frontier settlements of New Hampshire and Maine. To describe one is to describe all. A band of one hundred and sixtyFrenchmen, with nearly as many Indians, gathers at Montreal inmid-winter. The ground is deep with snow and they troop on snowshoesacross the white wastes. Dragging on sleds the needed supplies, theymarch up the Richelieu River and over the frozen surface of LakeChamplain. As they advance with caution into the colony of New York theysuffer terribly, now from bitter cold, now from thaws which make thesoft trail almost impassable. On a February night their scouts tell themthat they are near Schenectady, on the English frontier. There are youngmembers of the Canadian noblesse in the party. In the dead of night theycreep up to the paling which surrounds the village. The signal is givenand the village is awakened by the terrible war-whoop. Doors are smashedby axes and hatchets, and women and children are killed as they lie inbed, or kneel, shrieking for mercy. Houses are set on fire and livinghuman beings are thrown into the flames. By midday the assailants havefinished their dread work and are retreating along the forest pathsdragging with them a few miserable captives. In this winter of 1689-90raiding parties also came back from the borders of New Hampshire and ofMaine with news of similar exploits, and Quebec and Montreal glowed withthe joy of victory. 

Far away an answering attack was soon on foot. Sir William Phips ofMassachusetts, the son of a poor settler on the Kennebec River, had madehis first advance in life by taking up the trade of carpenter in Boston. Only when grown up had he learned to read and write. He married a richwife, and ease of circumstances freed his mind for great designs. Somefifty years before he was thus relieved of material cares, a Spanishgalleon carrying vast wealth had been wrecked in the West Indies. Phipsnow planned to raise the ship and get the money. For this enterprise heobtained support in England and set out on his exacting adventure. Onthe voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips thathe must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader with his fistsand triumphed by sheer strength of body and will. A second mutiny healso quelled, and then took his ship to Jamaica where he got rid of itsworthless crew. His enterprise had apparently failed; but the secondDuke of Albemarle and other powerful men believed in him and helped himto make another trial. This time he succeeded in finding the wreck onthe coast of Hispaniola, and took possession of its cargo of preciousmetals and jewels--treasure to the value of three hundred thousandpounds sterling. Of the spoil Phips himself received sixteen thousandpounds, a great fortune for a New Englander in those days. He was alsoknighted for his services and, in the end, was named by William and Marythe first royal Governor of Massachusetts. 

Massachusetts, whose people had been thoroughly aroused by the Frenchincursions, resolved to retaliate by striking at the heart of Canada bysea and to take Quebec. Sir William Phips, though not yet made Governor, would lead the expedition. The first blow fell in Acadia. Phips sailedup the Bay of Fundy and on May 11, 1690, landed a force before PortRoyal. The French Governor surrendered on terms. The conquest wasintended to be final, and the people were offered their lives andproperty on the condition of taking, the oath to be loyal subjects ofWilliam and Mary. This many of them did and were left unmolested. It wasa bloodless victory. But Phips, the Puritan crusader, was something of apirate. He plundered private property and was himself accused of takingnot merely the silver forks and spoons of the captive Governor but evenhis wigs, shirts, garters, and night caps. The Boston Puritans joyfullypillaged the church at Port Royal, and overturned the high altar andthe images. The booty was considerable and by the end of May Phips, aprosperous hero, was back in Boston. 

Boston was aflame with zeal to go on and conquer Canada. By the middleof August Phips had set out on the long sea voyage to Quebec, withtwenty-two hundred men, a great force for a colonial enterprise of thattime, and in all some forty ships. The voyage occupied more than twomonths. Apparently the hardy carpenter-sailor, able enough to carrythrough a difficult undertaking with a single ship, lacked theorganizing skill to manage a great expedition. He performed, however, the feat of navigating safely with his fleet the treacherous waters ofthe lower St. Lawrence. On the morning of October 16, 1690, watchersat Quebec saw the fleet, concerning which they had already been warned, rounding the head of the Island of Orleans and sailing into the broadbasin. Breathless spectators counted the ships. There were thirty-fourin sight, a few large vessels, some mere fishing craft. It was aspectacle well calculated to excite and alarm the good people of Quebec. They might, however, take comfort in the knowledge that their greatFrontenac was present to defend them. A few days earlier he had been inMontreal, but, when there had come the startling news of the approach ofthe enemy's ships, he had hurried down the river and had been receivedwith shouts of joy by the anxious populace. 

The situation was one well suited to Frontenac's genius for thedramatic. When a boat under a flag of truce put out from the Englishships, Frontenac hurried four canoes to meet it. The English envoy wasplaced blindfold in one of these canoes and was paddled to the shore. Here two soldiers took him by the arms and led him over many obstaclesup the steep ascent to the Chateau St. Louis. He could see nothing butcould hear the beating of drums, the blowing of trumpets, the jeersand shouting of a great multitude in a town which seemed to be full ofsoldiers and to have its streets heavily barricaded. When the bandagewas taken from his eyes he found himself in a great room of the Chateau. Before him stood Frontenac, in brilliant uniform, surrounded by the mostglittering array of officers which Quebec could muster. The astonishedenvoy presented a letter from Phips. It was a curt demand in the nameof King William of England for the unconditional surrender of all "fortsand castles" in Canada, of Frontenac himself, and all his forces andsupplies. On such conditions Phips would show mercy, as a Christianshould. Frontenac must answer within an hour. When the letter had beenread the envoy took a watch from his pocket and pointed out the time toFrontenac. It was ten o'clock. The reply must be given by eleven. Loudmutterings greeted the insulting message. One officer cried out thatPhips was a pirate and that his messenger should be hanged. Frontenacknew well how to deal with such a situation. He threw the letter inthe envoy's face and turned his back upon him. The unhappy man, whounderstood French, heard the Governor give orders that a gibbet shouldbe erected on which he was to be hanged. When the Bishop and theIntendant pleaded for mercy, Frontenac seemed to yield. He would nottake, he said, an hour to reply, but would answer at once. He knew nosuch person as King William. James, though in exile, was the true Kingof England and the good friend of the King of France. There would be nosurrender to a pirate. After this outburst, the envoy asked if he mighthave the answer in writing. "No!" thundered Frontenac. "I will answeronly from the mouths of my cannon and with my musketry!"

Phips could not take Quebec. In carrying out his plans, he was slow anddilatory. Nature aided his foe. The weather was bad, the waters beforeQuebec were difficult, and boats grounded unexpectedly in a fallingtide. Phips landed a force on the north side of the basin at Beauportbut was held in check by French and Indian skirmishing parties. Hesailed his ships up close to Quebec and bombarded the stronghold, butthen, as now, ships were impotent against well-served land defenses. Soon Phips was short of ammunition. A second time he made a landing inorder to attack Quebec from the valley of the St. Charles but Frenchregulars fought with militia and Indians to drive off his forces. Phipsheld a meeting with his officers for prayer. Heaven, however, deniedsuccess to his arms. If he could not take Quebec, it was time to begone, for in the late autumn the dangers of the St. Lawrence are great. He lay before Quebec for just a week and on the 23d of October sailedaway. It was late in November when his battered fleet began to straggleinto Boston. The ways of God had not proved as simple as they had seemedto the Puritan faith, for the stronghold of Satan had not fallen beforethe attacks of the Lord's people. There were searchings of heart, recriminations, and financial distress in Boston. 

For seven years more the war endured. Frontenac's victory over Phips atQuebec was not victory over the Iroquois or victory over the colony ofNew York. In 1691 this colony sent Peter Schuyler with a force againstCanada by way of Lake Champlain. Schuyler penetrated almost to Montreal, gained some indecisive success, and caused much suffering to the unhappyCanadian settlers. Frontenac made his last great stroke in duly, 1696, when he led more than two thousand men through the primeval forestto destroy the villages of the Onondaga and the Oneida tribes of theIroquois. On the journey from the south shore of Lake Ontario, the oldman of seventy-five was unable to walk over the rough portages andfifty Indians shouting songs of joy carried his great canoe on theirshoulders. When the soldiers left the canoes and marched forward tothe fight, they bore Frontenac in an easy chair. He did not destroy hisenemy, for many of the Indians fled, but he burned their chief villageand taught them a new respect for the power of the French. It wasthe last great effort of the old warrior. In the next year, 1697, was concluded the Peace of Ryswick; and in 1698 Frontenac died in hisseventy-ninth year, a hoary champion of France's imperial designs. 

The Peace of Ryswick was an indecisive ending of an indecisive war. It was indeed one of those bad treaties which invite renewed war. Thestruggle had achieved little but to deepen the conviction of each sidethat it must make itself stronger for the next fight. Each gave backmost of what it had gained. The peace, however, did not leave mattersquite as they had been. The position of William was stronger thanbefore, for France had treated with him and now recognized him as Kingof England. Moreover France, hitherto always victorious, with generalswho had not known defeat, was really defeated when she could not longeradvance. 

CHAPTER II. Quebec And Boston

At the end of the seventeenth century it must have seemed a far cryfrom Versailles to Quebec. The ocean was crossed only by small sailingvessels haunted by both tempest and pestilence, the one likely toprolong the voyage by many weeks, the other to involve the sacrifice ofscores of lives through scurvy and other maladies. Yet, remote asthe colony seemed, Quebec was the child of Versailles, protected andnourished by Louis XIV and directed by him in its minutest affairs. TheKing spent laborious hours over papers relating to the cherished colonyacross the sea. He sent wise counsel to his officials in Canada andwith tactful patience rebuked their faults. He did everything for thecolonists--gave them not merely land, but muskets, farm implements, evenchickens, pigs, and sometimes wives. The defect of his governmentwas that it tended to be too paternal. The vital needs of a colonystruggling with the problems of barbarism could hardly be read correctlyand provided for at Versailles. Colonies, like men, are strong only whenthey learn to take care of themselves. 

The English colonies present a vivid contrast. London did not directand control Boston. In London the will, indeed, was not wanting, for theStuart kings, Charles II and James H, were not less despotic in spiritthan Louis XIV. But while in France there was a vast organism whichmoved only as the King willed, in England power was more widelydistributed. It may be claimed with truth that English nationalliberties are a growth from the local freedom which has existed fromtime immemorial. When British colonists left the motherland to founda new society, their first instinct was to create institutions whichinvolved local control. The solemn covenant by which in 1620 the worncompany of the Mayflower, after a long and painful voyage, pledgedthemselves to create a self-governing society, was the inevitableexpression of the English political spirit. Do what it would, Londoncould never control Boston as Versailles controlled Quebec. 

The English colonist kept his eyes fixed on his own fortunes. Fromthe state he expected little; from himself, everything. He had no greatsense of unity with neighboring colonists under the same crown. Onlywhen he realized some peril to his interests, some menace which wouldmaster him if he did not fight, was he stirred to warlike energy. Frenchleaders, on the other hand, were thinking of world politics. The voyageof Verrazano, the Italian sailor who had been sent out by Francis I ofFrance in 1524, and who had sailed along a great stretch of the Atlanticcoast, was deemed by Frenchmen a sufficient title to the whole of NorthAmerica. They flouted England's claim based upon the voyages of theCabots nearly thirty years earlier. Spain, indeed, might claim Florida, but the English had no real right to any footing in the New World. Aslate as in 1720, when the fortunes of France were already on the wanein the New World, Father Bobe, a priest of the Congregation ofMissions, presented to the French court a document which sets forth inuncompromising terms the rights of France to all the land between thethirtieth and the fiftieth parallels of latitude. True, he says, othersoccupy much of this territory, but France must drive out intruders andin particular the English. Boston rightly belongs to France and so alsodo New York and Philadelphia. The only regions to which England has anyjust claim are Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay, ceded by Franceunder the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This weak cession all trueFrenchmen regret and England must hand the territories back. She owesFrance compensation for her long occupation of lands not really hers. Ifshe makes immediate restitution, the King of France, generous and kind, will forego some of his rights and allow England to retain a strip somefifty miles wide extending from Maine to Florida. France has the rightto the whole of the interior. In the mind of the reverend memorialist, no doubt, there was the conviction that England would soon lose themeager strip, fifty miles wide, which France might yield. 

These dreams of power had a certain substance. It seems to us now that, from the first, the French were dreaming of the impossible. We knowwhat has happened, and after the event it is an easy task to measurepolitical forces. The ambitions of France were not, however, emptyfancies. More than once she has seemed on the point of masteringthe nations of the West. Just before the year 1690 she had a greatopportunity. In England, in 1660, the fall of the system created byOliver Cromwell brought back to the English throne the House of Stuart, for centuries the ally and usually the pupil of France. Stuart kingsof Scotland, allied with France, had fought the Tudor kings of England. Stuarts in misfortune had been the pensioners of France. Charles II, aStuart, alien in religion to the convictions of his people, looked toCatholic France to give him security on his throne. Before the firsthalf of the reign of Louis XIV had ended, it was the boast of the Frenchthat the King of England was vassal to their King, that the states ofcontinental Europe had become mere pawns in the game of their GrandMonarch, and that France could be master of as much of the world aswas really worth mastering. In 1679 the Canadian Intendant, Duchesneau, writing from Quebec to complain of the despotic conduct of the Governor, Frontenac, paid a tribute to "the King our master, of whom the wholeworld stands in awe, who has just given law to all Europe. "

To men thus obsessed by the greatness of their own ruler it seemed noimpossible task to overthrow a few English colonies in America of whoseKing their own was the patron and the paymaster. The world of highpolitics has never been conspicuous for its knowledge of human nature. Astrong blow from a strong arm would, it was believed both at Versaillesand Quebec, shatter forever a weak rival and give France the prize ofNorth America. Officers in Canada talked loftily of the ease with whichFrance might master all the English colonies. The Canadians, it wassaid, were a brave and warlike people, trained to endure hardship, whilethe English colonists were undisciplined, ignorant of war, and cowardly. The link between them and the motherland, said these observers, couldbe easily broken, for the colonies were longing to be free. There is nodoubt that France could put into the field armies vastly greater thanthose of England. Had the French been able to cross the Channel, march on London and destroy English power at its root, the story ofcivilization in a great part of North America might well have beendifferent, and we should perhaps find now on the banks of the Hudsonwhat we find on the banks of the St. Lawrence--villages dominatedby great churches and convents, with inhabitants Catholic to a man, speaking the language and preserving the traditions of France. The stripof inviolate sea between Calais and Dover made impossible, however, anassault on London. Sea power kept secure not only England but Englisheffort in America and in the end defeated France. 

England had defenses other than her great strength on the sea. In spiteof the docility towards France shown by the English King, Charles II, himself half French in blood and at heart devoted to the triumph of theCatholic faith, the English people would tolerate no policies likelyto make England subservient to France. This was forbidden by age-longtradition. The struggle had become one of religion as well as of race. A fight for a century and a half with the Roman Catholic Church hadmade England sternly, fanatically Protestant. In their suspicion ofthe system which France accepted, Englishmen had sent a king to thescaffold, had overthrown the monarchy, and had created a militaryrepublic. This republic, indeed, had fallen, but the distrust of theaims of the Roman Catholic Church remained intense and burst intopassionate fury the moment an understanding of the aims of France gainedcurrency. 

There are indeed few passages in English history less creditable thanthe panic fear of Roman Catholic plots which swept the country inthe days when Frontenac at Quebec was working to destroy English andProtestant influence in America. In 1678, Titus Oates, a clergyman ofthe Church of England who had turned Roman Catholic, declared that, while in the secrets of his new church, he had found on foot a plot torestore Roman Catholic dominance in England by means of the murder ofCharles II and of any other crimes necessary for that purpose. Oatessaid that he had left the Church and returned to his former faithbecause of the terrible character of the conspiracy which he haddiscovered. His story was not even plausible; he was known to be a manof vicious life; moreover, Catholic plotters would hardly murder a kingwho was at heart devoted to Catholic policy. England, however, was ina nervous state of mind; Charles II was known to be intriguing withFrance; and a cruel fury surged through the nation. For a share in thesupposed plots, a score of people, among them one of the great nobles ofEngland, the venerable and innocent Earl of Stafford, were condemned todeath and executed. Whatever Charles II himself might have thought, he was obliged for his own safety to acquiesce in the policy ofpersecution. 

Catholic France was not less malignant than Protestant England. Thoughcruel severity had long been shown to Protestants, they seemed tobe secure under the law of France in certain limited rights and in arestricted toleration. In 1685, however, Louis XIV revoked the Edictof Nantes by which Henry IV a century earlier had guaranteed thistoleration. All over France there had already burst out terriblepersecution, and the act of Louis XIV brought a fiery climax. Unhappyheretics who would not accept Roman Catholic doctrine found lifeintolerable. Tens of thousands escaped from France in spite of alaw which, though it exiled the Protestant ministers, forbade otherProtestants to leave the country. Stories of plots were made the excuseto seize the property of Protestants. Regiments of soldiers, chargedwith the task, could boast of many enforced "conversions. " Quartered onProtestant households, they made the life of the inmates a burden untilthey abandoned their religion. Among the means used were torture beforea slow fire, the tearing off of the finger nails, the driving of thewhole families naked into the streets and the forbidding of any oneto give them shelter, the violation of women, and the crowding of theheretics in loathsome prisons. By such means it took a regiment ofsoldiers in Rouen only a few days to "convert" to the old faith some sixhundred families. Protestant ministers caught in France were sent to thegalleys for life. The persecutions which followed the revocation of theEdict of Nantes outdid even Titus Oates. 

Charles II died in 1685 and the scene at his deathbed encouraged inEngland suspicions of Catholic policy and in France hope that thispolicy was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute, Charles yet possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew wellthat to preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant andmust also respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished, however, the Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ideals of hisBourbon mother. On his deathbed he avowed his real belief. With greatprecautions for secrecy, he was received into the Roman Catholic Churchand comforted with the consolations which it offers to the dying. Whilethis secret was suspected by the English people, one further fact wasperfectly clear. Their new King, James II, was a zealous Roman Catholic, who would use all his influence to bring England back to the Romancommunion. Suspicion of the King's designs soon became certainty and, after four years of bitter conflict with James, the inevitable happened. The Roman Catholic Stuart King was driven from his throne and hisdaughter Mary and her Protestant husband, William of Orange, became thesovereigns of England by choice of the English Parliament. Again hadthe struggle between Roman Catholic and Protestant brought revolution inEngland, and the politics of Europe dominated America. The revolution inLondon was followed by revolution in Boston and New York. The authorityof James II was repudiated. His chief agent in New England, Sir EdmundAndros, was seized and imprisoned, and William and Mary reigned over theEnglish colonies in America as they reigned over the motherland. 

To the loyal Catholics of France the English, who had driven out aCatholic king and dethroned an ancient line, were guilty of the doublesin of heresy and of treason. To the Jesuit enthusiast in Canada notonly were they infidel devils in human shape upon whose plans must restthe curse of God; they were also rebels, republican successors of theaccursed Cromwell, who had sent an anointed king to the block. It wouldbe a holy thing to destroy this lawless power which ruled from London. The Puritans of Boston were, in turn, not less convinced that theirs wasthe cause of God, and that Satan, enthroned in the French dominanceat Quebec, must soon fall. The smaller the pit the fiercer the rats. Passions raged in the petty colonial capitals more bitterly than even inLondon and Paris. This intensity of religious differences embittered thestruggle for the mastery of the new continent. 

The English colonies had twenty white men to one in Canada. Yet Canadawas long able to wage war on something like equal terms. She had thesupreme advantage of a single control. There was no trouble at Quebecabout getting a reluctant legislature to vote money for war purposes. Nosemblance of an elected legislature existed and the money for war camenot from the Canadians, but from the capacious, if now usually depleted, coffers of the French court at Versailles. In the English colonies thelegislatures preferred, of all political struggles, one about moneywith the Governor, the representative of the King. At least one of theEnglish colonies, Pennsylvania, believing that evil is best conquered bynon-resistance, was resolutely against war for any reason, good or bad. Other colonies often raised the more sordid objection that they weretoo poor to help in war. The colonial legislatures, indeed, with theireternal demand for the privileges and rights which the British Houseof Commons had won in the long centuries of its history, constitute themost striking of all the contrasts with Canada. In them were always thesparks of an independent temper. The English diarist, Evelyn, wrote, in1671, that New England was in "a peevish and touchy humour. " Colonistswho go out to found a new state will always demand rights like thosewhich they have enjoyed at home. It was unthinkable that men of Boston, who, themselves, or whose party in England, had fought against adespotic king, had sent him to the block and driven his son from thethrone, would be content with anything short of controlling the taxeswhich they paid, making the laws which they obeyed, and carrying ontheir affairs in their own way. When obliged to accept a governor fromEngland, they were resolved as far as possible to remain his paymaster. In a majority of the colonies they insisted that the salary of theGovernor should be voted each year by their representatives, in orderthat they might be able always to use against him the cogent logic offinancial need. On questions of this kind Quebec had nothing to say. Tothe King in France and to him alone went all demands for pay and honors. If, in such things, the people of Canada had no remote voice, they werestill as well off as Frenchmen in France. New England was a copy ofOld England and New France a copy of Old France. There was, as yet, no"peevish and touchy humour" at either Quebec or Versailles in respect topolitical rights. 

Canada, in spite of its scanty population, was better equipped for warthan was any of the English colonies. The French were largely explorersand hunters, familiar with hardship and danger and led by men with alove of adventure. The English, on the other hand, were chiefly tradersand farmers who disliked and dreaded the horrors of war. There was notto be found in all the English colonies a family of the type of theCanadian family of Le Moyne. Charles Le Moyne, of Montreal, a member ofthe Canadian noblesse, had ten sons, every one of whom showed the spiritand capacity of the adventurous soldier. They all served in the time ofFrontenac. The most famous of them, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, shinesin varied roles. He was a frontier leader who made his name a terrorin the English settlements; a sailor who seized and ravaged the Englishsettlements in Newfoundland, who led a French squadron to the remote andchill waters of Hudson Bay, and captured there the English strongholdsof the fur trade; and a leader in the more peaceful task of founding, at the mouth of the Mississippi, the colony of Louisiana. Canada had theadvantage over the English colonies in bold pioneers of this type. 

Canada was never doubtful of the English peril or divided in the desireto destroy it. Nearly always, a soldier or a naval officer ruled in theChateau St. Louis, at Quebec, with eyes alert to see and arms ready toavert military danger. England sometimes sent to her colonies in Americagovernors who were disreputable and inefficient, needy hangers-on, too well-known at home to make it wise there to give them office, butthought good enough for the colonies. It would not have been easy tofind a governor less fitted to maintain the dignity and culture of highoffice than Sir William Phips, Governor of Massachusetts in the timeof Frontenac. Phips, however, though a rough brawler, was reasonablyefficient, but Lord Cornbury, who became Earl of Clarendon, owed hisappointment as Governor of New Jersey and New York in 1701, only to hisnecessities and to the desire of his powerful connections to provide forhim. Queen Anne was his cousin. He was a profligate, feeble in mindbut arrogant in spirit, with no burden of honesty and a great burdenof debt, and he made no change in his scandalous mode of life when herepresented his sovereign at New York. There were other governors onlyslightly better. Canada had none as bad. Her viceroys as a rule keptup the dignity of their office and respected the decencies of life. InEnglish colonies, governors eked out their incomes by charging heavyfees for official acts and any one who refused to pay such fees was notlikely to secure attention to his business. In Canada the populationwas too scanty and the opportunity too limited to furnish happyhunting-grounds of this kind. The governors, however, badly paid asthey were, must live, and, in the case of a man like Frontenac, repairfortunes shattered at court. To do so they were likely to have someconcealed interest in the fur trade. This was forbidden by the court butwas almost a universal practice. Some of the governors carried tradingto great lengths and aroused the bitter hostility of rival tradinginterests. The fur trade was easily controlled as a government monopolyand it was unfair that a needy governor should share its profits. But, after all, such a quarrel was only between rival monopolists. Bettera trading governor than one who plundered the people or who by drunkenprofligacy discredited his office. 

While all Canada was devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, the diversityof religious beliefs in the English colonies was a marked feature ofsocial life. In Virginia, by law of the colony, the Church of Englandwas the established Church. In Massachusetts, founded by stern Puritans, the public services of the Church of England were long prohibited. InPennsylvania there was dominant the sect derisively called "Quakers, "who would have no ecclesiastical organization and believed that religionwas purely a matter for the individual soul. Boston jeered at thesuperstitions of Quebec, such as the belief of the missionaries that adrop of water, with the murmured words of baptism, transformed a dyingIndian child from an outcast savage into an angel of light. Quebecmight, however, deride Boston with equal justice. Sir William Phipsbelieved that malignant and invisible devils had made a special invasionof Massachusetts, dragging people from their houses, pushing them intofire and water, and carrying them through the air for miles over treesand hills. These devils, it was thought, took visible form, of whichthe favorite was that of a black cat. Witches were thought to be able topass through keyholes and to exercise charms which would destroy theirvictims. While Phips and Frontenac were struggling for the mastery ofCanada, a fever of excitement ran through New England about these perilsof witchcraft. When, in 1692, Phips became Governor of Massachusetts, he named a special court to try accused persons. The court consideredhundreds of cases and condemned and hanged nineteen persons for whollyimaginary crimes. Whatever the faults of the rule of the priests atQuebec, they never equaled this in brutality or surpassed it in blindsuperstition. In New England we find bitter religious persecution. InCanada there was none: the door was completely closed to Protestants andthe family within were all of one mind. There was no one to persecute. 

The old contrast between French and English ideals still endures. AtQuebec there was an early zeal for education. In 1638, the year in whichHarvard College was organized, a college and a school for training theFrench youth and the natives were founded at Quebec. In the next yearthe Ursuline nuns established at Quebec the convent which through allthe intervening years has continued its important work of educatinggirls. In zeal for education Quebec was therefore not behind Boston. Butthe spirit was different. Quebec believed that safety lay in control bythe Church, and this control it still maintains. Massachusetts came intime to believe that safety lay in freeing education from any spiritualauthority. Today Laval University at Quebec and Harvard University atCambridge represent the outcome of these differing modes of thought. Other forces were working to produce essentially different types. Theprinting-press Quebec did not know; and, down to the final overthrowof the French power in 1763, no newspaper or book was issued in Canada. Massachusetts, on the other hand, had a printing-press as early as in1638 and soon books were being printed in the colony. Of course, in thespirit of the time, there was a strict censorship. But, by 1722, thishad come to an end, and after that the newspaper, unknown in Canada, wasbusy and free in its task of helping to mold the thought of the Englishcolonies in America. 

CHAPTER III. France Loses Acadia

The Peace of Ryswick in 1697 had settled nothing finally. France wasstill strong enough to aim at the mastery of Europe and America. Englandwas torn by internal faction and would not prepare to face her menacingenemy. Always the English have disliked a great standing army. Now, despite the entreaties of a king who knew the real danger, they reducedthe army to the pitiable number of seven thousand men. Louis XIV grewever more confident. In 1700 he was able to put his own grandson on thethrone of Spain and to dominate Europe from the Straits of Gibraltarto the Netherlands. Another event showing his resolve soon startled theworld. In 1701 died James II, the dethroned King of England, and Louiswent out of his way to insult the English people. William III was Kingby the will of Parliament. Louis had recognized him as such. Yet, on thedeath of James, Louis declared that James's son was now the true King ofEngland. This impudent defiance meant, and Louis intended that it shouldmean, renewed war. England had invited it by making her forces weak. William III died in 1702 and the war went on under his successor, QueenAnne. 

Thus it happened that once more war-parties began to prowl on theCanadian frontier, and women and children in remote clearings in theforest shivered at the prospect of the savage scourge. The Englishcolonies suffered terribly. Everywhere France was aggressive. Thewarlike Iroquois were now so alarmed by the French menace that, tosecure protection, they ceded their territory to Queen Anne and becameBritish subjects, a humiliating step indeed for a people who had oncethought themselves the most important in all the world. By 1703 thebutchery on the frontier was in full operation. The Jesuit historianCharlevoix, with complacent exaggeration, says that in that year alonethree hundred men were killed on the New England frontier by the AbenakiIndians incited by the French. The numbers slain were in fact fewer andthe slain were not always men but sometimes old women and young babies. The policy of France was to make the war so ruthless that a gulf ofhatred should keep their Indian allies from ever making friends andresuming trade with the English, whose hatchets, blankets, and othersupplies were, as the French well knew, better and cheaper than theirown. The French hoped to seize Boston, to destroy its industries andsink its ships, then to advance beyond Boston and deal out to otherplaces the same fate. The rivalry of New England was to be ended bymaking that region a desert. 

The first fury of the war raged on the frontier of Maine, which was anoutpost of Massachusetts. On an August day in 1703 the people of therugged little settlement of Wells were at their usual tasks when theyheard gunshots and war-whoops. Indians had crept up to attack the place. They set the village on fire and killed or carried off some twoscoreprisoners, chiefly women and children. The village of Deerfield, onthe northwestern frontier of Massachusetts, consisted of a woodenmeeting-house and a number of rough cabins which lodged the two or threehundred inhabitants. On a February night in 1704 savages led by a youngmember of the Canadian noblesse, Hertel de Rouville, approached thevillage silently on snowshoes, waited on the outskirts during the deadof night, and then just before dawn burst in upon the sleeping people. The work was done quickly. Within an hour after dawn the place had beenplundered and set on fire, forty or fifty dead bodies of men and womenand children lay in the village, and a hundred and eleven miserableprisoners were following their captors on snowshoes through the forest, each prisoner well knowing that to fall by the way meant to have hishead split by a tomahawk and the scalp torn off. When on the firstnight one of them slipped away, Rouville told the others that, shoulda further escape occur, he would burn alive all those remaining inhis hands. The minister of the church at Deerfield, the Reverend JohnWilliams, was a captive, together with his wife and five children. Thewife, falling by the way, was killed by a stroke of a tomahawk and thebody was left lying on the snow. The children were taken from theirfather and scattered among different bands. After a tramp of two hundredmiles through the wilderness to the outlying Canadian settlements, theminister in the end reached Quebec. Every effort was made, even by hisIndian guard, to make him accept the Roman Catholic faith, but the sternPuritan was obdurate. His daughter, Eunice, on the other hand, caughtyoung, became a Catholic so devoted that later she would not return toNew England lest the contact with Protestants should injure her faith. She married a Caughnawaga Indian and became to all outward appearance asquaw. Williams himself lived to resume his career in New England and towrite the story of the raid at Deerfield. 

It may be that there were men in New England and New York capable ofsimilar barbarities. It is true that the savage allies of the English, when at their worst, knew no restraint. There is nothing in the Frenchraids on a scale as great as that of the murderous raid by the Iroquoison the French village of Lachine. But the Puritans of New England, whilethey were ready to hew down savages, did not like and rarely took partin the massacre of Europeans. 

As the outrages went on year after year the temper of New Englandtowards the savages grew more ruthless. The General Court, theLegislature of Massachusetts, offered forty pounds for every Indianscalp brought in. Indians, like wolves, were vermin to be destroyed. Theanger of New England was further kindled by what was happening onthe sea. Privateers from Port Royal, in Acadia, attacked New Englandcommerce and New England fishermen and made unsafe the approaches toBoston. This was to touch a commercial community on its most tenderspot; and a deep resolve was formed that Canada should be conquered andthe menace ended once for all. 

It was only an occasional spirit in Massachusetts who made comprehensivepolitical plans. One of these was Samuel Vetch, a man somewhat differentfrom the usual type of New England leader, for he was not of Englishbut of Scottish origin, of the Covenanter strain. Vetch, himself anadventurous trader, had taken a leading part in the ill-fated Scottishattempt to found on the Isthmus of Panama a colony, which, in easytouch with both the Pacific and the Atlantic, should carry on a giganticcommerce between the East and the West. The colony failed, chiefly, perhaps, because Spain would not have this intrusion into territorywhich she claimed. Tropical disease and the disunion and incompetence ofthe colonists themselves were Spain's allies in the destruction. Afterthis, Vetch had found his way to Boston, where he soon became prominent. In 1707 Scotland and England were united under one Parliament, and theactive mind of Vetch was occupied with something greater than a Scottishcolony at Panama. Queen Anne, Vetch was resolved, should be "SoleEmpress of the vast North American Continent. " Massachusetts was readyfor just such a cry. The General Court took up eagerly the plan ofVetch. The scheme required help from England and the other colonies. ToEngland Vetch went in 1708. Marlborough had just won the great victoryof Oudenarde. It was good, the English ministry thought, to hit Francewherever she raised her head. In the spring of 1709 Vetch returned toBoston with promises of powerful help at once for an attack on Canada, and with the further promise that, the victory won, he himself shouldbe the first British Governor of Canada. New York was to help with ninehundred men. Other remoter colonies were to aid on a smaller scale. These contingents were to attack Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Twelvehundred men from New England were to join the regulars from England andgo against Quebec by way of the sea and master Canada once for all. 

The plan was similar to the one which Amherst and Wolfe carried tosuccess exactly fifty years later, and with a Wolfe in command it mightnow have succeeded. The troops from England were to be at Boston beforethe end of May, 1709. The colonial forces gathered. New Jersey andPennsylvania refused, indeed, to send any soldiers; but New York andthe other colonies concerned did their full share. By the early summerColonel Francis Nicholson, with some fifteen hundred men, lay fullyequipped in camp on Wood Creek near Lake Champlain, ready to descendon Montreal as soon as news came of the arrival of the British fleetat Boston for the attack on Quebec. On the shores of Boston harbor layanother colonial army, large for the time--the levies from New Englandwhich were to sail to Quebec. Officers had come out from England todrill these hardy men, and as soldiers they were giving a good accountof themselves. They watched, fasted, and prayed, and watched again forthe fleet from England. Summer came and then autumn and still the fleetdid not arrive. Far away, in the crowded camp on Wood Creek, pestilencebroke out and as time wore on this army slowly melted away either bydeath or withdrawal. At last, on October 11, 1709, word came from theBritish ministry, dated the 27th of July, two months after the promisedfleet was to arrive at Boston, that it had been sent instead toPortugal. 

In spite of this disappointment the resolution endured to conquerCanada. New York joined New England in sending deputations to London toask again for help. Four Mohawk chiefs went with Peter Schuyler from NewYork and were the wonder of the day in London. It is something to havea plan talked about. Malplaquet, the last of Marlborough's greatvictories, had been won in the autumn of 1709 and the thought of a newenterprise was popular. Nicholson, who had been sent from Boston, urgedthat the first step should be to take Port Royal. What the coloniesrequired for this expedition was the aid of four frigates and fivehundred soldiers who should reach Boston by March. 

The help arrived, though not in March but in July, 1710. Boston wasfilled with enthusiasm for the enterprise. The legislature made militaryservice compulsory, quartered soldiers in private houses without consentof the owners, impressed sailors, and altogether was quite arbitraryand high-handed. The people, however, would bear almost anything if onlythey could crush Port Royal, the den of privateers who seized many NewEngland vessels. On the 18th of September, to the great joy of Boston, the frigates and the transports sailed away, with Nicholson in commandof the troops and Vetch as adjutant-general. 

What we know today as Digby Basin on the east side of the Bay of Fundy, is a great harbor, landlocked but for a narrow entrance about amile wide. Through this "gut, " as it is called, the tide rushes in atorrential and dangerous stream, but soon loses its violence in thespacious and quiet harbor. Here the French had made their firstenduring colony in America. On the shores of the beautiful basin thefleurs-de-lis had been raised over a French fort as early as 1605. Alovely valley opens from the head of the basin to the interior. Itis now known as the Annapolis Valley, a fertile region dotted by thehomesteads of a happy and contented people. These people, however, arenot French in race nor do they live under a French Government. When onthe 24th of September, 1710, the fleet from Boston entered the basin, and in doing so lost a ship and more than a score of men through thedestructive current, the decisive moment had come for all that region. Fate had decreed that the land should not remain French but shouldbecome English. 

Port Royal was at that time a typical French community of the New World. The village consisted of some poor houses made of logs or planks, awooden church, and, lying apart, a fort defended by earthworks. TheGovernor, Subercase, was a brave French officer. He ruled the littlecommunity with a despotism tempered only by indignant protests tothe King from those whom he ruled when his views and theirs did notcoincide. The peasants in the village counted for nothing. Connectedwith the small garrison there were ladies and gentlemen who had nolight opinion of their own importance and were so peppery that Subercasewished he had a madhouse in which to confine some of them. He thoughtwell of the country. It produced, he said, everything that Franceproduced except olives. The fertile land promised abundance of grain andthere was an inexhaustible supply of timber. There were many excellentharbors. Had he a million livres, he would, he said, invest it gladlyin the country and be certain of a good return. His enthusiasm hadproduced, however, no answering enthusiasm at Versailles, for there theinterests of Port Royal were miserably neglected. Yet it was a thornin the flesh of the English. In 1708 privateers from Port Royal haddestroyed no less than thirty-five English vessels, chiefly from Boston, and had carried to the fort four hundred and seventy prisoners. Evenin winter months French ships would flit out of Port Royal and bring inrichly laden prizes. Can we wonder at Boston's deep resolve that now atlast the pest should end!

It was an imposing force which sailed into the basin. The four frigatesand thirty transports carried an army far greater than Subercasehad thought possible. The English landed some fourteen hundred men. Subercase had less than three hundred. Within a few days, when theEnglish began to throw shells into the town, he asked for terms. On the16th of October the little garrison, neglected by France and left raggedand half-starved, marched out with drums beating and colors flying. TheEnglish, drawn up before the gate, showed the usual honors to a bravefoe. The French flag was hauled down and in its place floated thatof Britain. Port Royal was renamed Annapolis and Vetch was made itsGovernor. Three times before had the English come to Port Royal asconquerors and then gone away, but now they were to remain. Ever sincethat October day, when autumn was coloring the abundant foliage of thelovely harbor, the British flag has waved over Annapolis. Becausethe flag waved there it was destined to wave over all Acadia, or NovaScotia, and with Acadia in time went Canada. 

A partial victory, however, such as the taking of Port Royal, was notenough for the aroused spirit of the English. They and their allieshad beaten Louis XIV on the battlefields of Europe and had so worn outFrance that clouds and darkness were about the last days of the GrandMonarch now nearing his end. In America his agents were still drawing uppapers outlining grandiose designs for mastering the continent and forproving that England's empire was near its fall, but Europe knew thatFrance in the long war had been beaten. The right way to smite Francein America was to rely upon England's naval power, to master the greathighway of the St. Lawrence, to isolate Canada, and to strangle one byone the French settlements, beginning with Quebec. 

There was malignant intrigue at the court of Queen Anne. One favorite, the Duchess of Marlborough, had just been disgraced, and another, Mrs. Masham, had been taken on by the weak and stupid Queen. The conquest ofCanada, if it could be achieved without the aid of Marlborough, wouldhelp in his much desired overthrow. Petty motives were unhappily at theroot of the great scheme. Who better to lead such an expedition than thebrother of the new favorite whose success might discredit the husbandof the old one? Accordingly General "Jack" Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, was appointed to the chief military command and an admiral hithertolittle known but of good habits and quick wit, Sir Hovenden Walker, wasto lead the fleet. 

The expedition against Quebec was on a scale adequate for the time. Britain dispatched seven regiments of regulars, numbering in all fivethousand five hundred men, and there were besides in the fleet somethousands of sailors and marines. Never before had the English sent toNorth America a force so great. On June 24, 1711, Admiral Walker arrivedat Boston with his great array. Boston was impressed, but Boston wasalso a little hurt, for the British leaders were very lofty and superiorin their tone towards colonials and gave orders as if Boston were aprovincial city of England which must learn respect and obedience to HisMajesty's officers "vested with the Queen's Royal Power and Authority. "

More than seventy ships, led by nine men-of-war, sailed from Boston forthe attack on Canada. On board were nearly twelve thousand men. Comparedwith this imposing fleet, that of Phips, twenty-one years earlier, seemsfeeble. Phips had set out too late. This fleet was in good time, for itsailed on the 30th of July. Vetch, always competent, was in commandof the colonial military forces, but never had any chance to show hismettle, for during the voyage the seamen were in control. The Admiralhad left England with secret instructions. He had not been informed ofthe task before him and for it he was hardly prepared. There were nocompetent pilots to correct his ignorance. Now that he knew where he wasgoing he was anxious about the dangers of the northern waters. The St. Lawrence River, he believed, froze solidly to the bottom in winter andhe feared that the ice would crush the sides of his ships. As he hadprovisions for only eight or nine weeks, his men might starve. His mindwas filled, as he himself says, with melancholy and dismal horror at theprospect of seamen and soldiers, worn to skeletons by hunger, drawinglots to decide who should die first amidst the "adamantine frosts" and"mountains of snow" of bleak and barren Canada. 

The Gulf and River St. Lawrence spell death to an incompetent sailor. The fogs, the numerous shoals and islands, make skillful seamanshipnecessary. It is a long journey from Boston to Quebec by water. Forthree weeks, however, all went well. On the 22d of August, Walker wasout of sight of land in the Gulf where it is about seventy miles wideabove the Island of Anticosti. A strong east wind with thick fog isdreaded in those waters even now, and on the evening of that day a stormof this kind blew up. In the fog Walker lost his bearings. When in facthe was near the north shore he thought he was not far from the southshore. At half-past ten at night Paddon, the captain of the Edgar, Walker's flagship, came to tell him that land was in sight. Walkerassumed that it was the south shore and gave a fatal order for the fleetto turn and head northward, a change which turned them straight towardscliffs and breakers. He then went to bed. Soon one of the militaryofficers rushed to his cabin and begged him to come on deck as the shipswere among breakers. Walker, who was an irascible man, resented theintrusion and remained in bed. A second time the officer appeared andsaid the fleet would be lost if the Admiral did not act. Why it was leftfor a military rather than a naval officer to rouse the Admiral in sucha crisis we do not know. Perhaps the sailors were afraid of the greatman. Walker appeared on deck in dressing gown and slippers. The foghad lifted, and in the moonlight there could be seen breaking surf toleeward. A French pilot, captured in the Gulf, had taken pains to givewhat he could of alarming information. He now declared that the shipswere off the north shore. Walker turned his own ship sharply andsucceeded in beating out into deep water and safety. For the fleet thenight was terrible. Some ships dropped anchor which held, for happilythe storm abated. Fog guns and lights as signals of distress availedlittle to the ships in difficulty. Eight British transports laden withtroops and two ships carrying supplies were dashed to pieces on therocks. The shrieks of drowning men could be heard in the darkness. Thescene was the rocky Isle aux Oeufs and adjacent reefs off the northshore. About seven hundred soldiers, including twenty-nine officers, andin addition perhaps two hundred sailors, were lost on that awful night. 

The disaster was not overwhelming and Walker might have gone on andcaptured Quebec. He had not lost a single war-ship and he had still someeleven thousand men. General Hill might have stiffened the back of theforlorn Admiral, but Hill himself was no better. Vetch spoke for goingon. He knew the St. Lawrence waters for he had been at Quebec and hadactually charted a part of the river and was more familiar with it, hebelieved, than were the Canadians themselves. What pilots there weredeclared, however, that to go on was impossible and the helplesscaptains of the ships were of opinion that, with the warning of such adisaster, they could not disregard this counsel. Though the characterof the English is such that usually a reverse serves to stiffen theirbacks, in this case it was not so. A council of war yielded to the panicof the hour and the great fleet turned homeward. Soon it was gatheredin what is now Sydney harbor in Cape Breton. From here the New Englandships went home and Walker sailed for England. At Spithead the Edgar, the flag-ship, blew up and all on board perished. Walker was on shoreat the time. So far was he from being disgraced that he was given anew command. Later, when the Whigs came in, he was dismissed from theservice, less, it seems, in blame for the disaster than for his Toryopinions. It is not an unusual irony of life that Vetch, the one whollyefficient leader in the expedition, ended his days in a debtor's prison. 

Quebec had shivered before a menace, the greatest in its history. Through the long months of the summer of 1711 there had been prayer andfasting to avert the danger. Apparently trading ships had deserted thelower St. Lawrence in alarm, for no word had arrived at Quebec of theapproach of Walker's fleet. Nor had the great disaster been witnessed byany onlookers. The island where it occurred was then and still remainsdesert. Up to the middle of October, nearly two months after thedisaster, the watchers at Quebec feared that they might see any day aBritish fleet rounding the head of the Island of Orleans. On the 19th ofOctober the first news of the disaster arrived and then it was easyfor Quebec to believe that God had struck the English wretches with aterrible vengeance. Three thousand men, it was said, had reached landand then perished miserably. Many bodies had been found naked andin attitudes of despair. Other thousands had perished in the water. Vessel-loads of spoil had been gathered, rich plate, beautiful swords, magnificent clothing, gold, silver, jewels. The truth seems to bethat some weeks after the disaster the evidences of the wrecks werediscovered. Even to this day ships are battered to pieces in thoserock-strewn waters and no one survives to tell the story. Some fishermenlanding on the island had found human bodies, dead horses andother animals, and the hulls of seven ships. They had gathered somewreckage--and that was the whole story. Quebec sang Te Deum. Fromattacks by sea there had now been two escapes which showed God'slove for Canada. In the little church of Notre Dame des Victoires, consecrated at that time to the memory of the deliverance from Phips andWalker, daily prayers are still poured out for the well-being of Canada. God had been a present help on land as well as on the sea. Nicholson, with more than two thousand men, had been waiting at his camp near LakeChamplain to descend on Montreal as soon as Walker reached Quebec. Whenhe received the news of the disaster he broke up his force and retired. For the moment Canada was safe from the threatened invasion. 

In spite of this apparent deliverance, the long war, now near its end, brought a destructive blow to French power in America. Though Francestill possessed vigor and resources which her enemies were apt tounderrate, the war had gone against her in Europe. Her finest armies hadbeen destroyed by Marlborough, her taxation was crushing, her credit wasruined, her people were suffering for lack of food. The allies had begunto think that there was no humiliation which they might not put uponFrance. Louis XIV, they said, must give up Alsace, which, with Lorraine, he had taken some years earlier, and he must help to drive his owngrandson from the Spanish throne. This exorbitant demand stirred thepride not only of Louis but of the French nation, and the allies foundthat they could not trample France under their feet. The Treaty ofUtrecht, concluded in 1718, shows that each side was too strong as yetto be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough, Great Britain had lost one ofher chief assets. His name had become a terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is sung the popular ditty "MonsieurMalbrouck est mort, " a song of delight at a report that Marlborough wasdead. When in place of Marlborough leaders of the type of General Hillwere appointed to high command, France could not be finally beaten. TheTreaty of Utrecht was the outcome of war-weariness. It marks, however, a double check to Louis XIV. He could not master Europe and he couldnot master America. France now ceded to Britain her claim to Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay. She regarded this, however, as only atemporary setback and was soon planning and plotting great designs farsurpassing the narrower vision of the English colonies. 

It was with a wry face, however, that France yielded Acadia. To retainit she offered to give up all rights in the Newfoundland fisheries, thenursery of her marine. Britain would not yield Acadia, dreading chieflyperhaps the wrath of New England which had conquered Port Royal. Britain, however, compromised on the question of boundaries in a way sodangerous that the long war settled finally no great issues in America. She took Acadia "according to its ancient limits, "--but no one knewthese limits. They were to be defined by a joint commission of the twonations which, after forty years, reached no agreement. The Island ofCape Breton and the adjoining Ile St. Jean, now Prince EdwardIsland, remained to France. Though Britain secured sovereignty overNewfoundland, France retained extensive rights in the Newfoundlandfisheries. The treaty left unsettled the boundary between Canada andthe English colonies. While it yielded Hudson Bay to Britain, it settlednothing as to frontiers in the wilderness which stretched beyond theGreat Lakes into the Far West and which had vast wealth in furs. 

CHAPTER IV. Louisbourg And Boston

For thirty years England and France now remained at peace, and Englandhad many reasons for desiring peace to continue. Anne, the last of theStuart rulers, died in 1714. The new King, George I, Elector of Hanover, was a German and a German unchangeable, for he was already fifty four, with little knowledge of England and none of the English, and withan undying love for the dear despotic ways easily followed in a smallGerman principality. He and his successor George II were thinkingeternally of German rather than of English problems, and with Germaninterests chiefly regarded it was well that England should make a friendof France. It was well, too, that under a new dynasty, with its titledisputed, England should not encourage France to continue the friendlypolicy of Louis XIV towards James, the deposed Stuart Pretender. Englandhad just made a new, determined, and arrogant enemy by forcing uponSpain the deep humiliation of ceding Gibraltar, which had been takenin 1704 by Admiral Rooke with allied forces. The proudest monarchy inEurope was compelled to see a spot of its own sacred territory heldpermanently by a rival nation. Gibraltar Spain was determined torecover. Its loss drove her into the arms of the enemies of England andremains to this day a grievance which on occasion Spanish politiciansknow well how to make useful. 

Great Britain was now under the direction of a leader whose policy waspeace. A nation is happy when a born statesman with a truly liberal mindand a genuine love of his country comes to the front in its affairs. Such a man was Sir Robert Walpole. He was a Whig squire, a plain countrygentleman, with enough of culture to love good pictures and the ancientclassics, but delighting chiefly in sports and agriculture, harddrinking and politics. When only twenty-seven he was already a leaderamong the Whigs; at thirty-two he was Secretary for War; and before hewas forty he had become Prime Minister, a post which he really createdand was the first Englishman to hold. Friendship with France marked anew phase of British policy. Walpole's baffled enemies said that he wasbribed by France. His shrewd insight kept France lukewarm in its supportof the Stuart rising in 1715, which he punished with great severity. Butit was as a master of finance that he was strongest. While continentalnations were wasting men and money Walpole gloried in saving Englishlives and English gold. He found new and fruitful modes of taxation, butwhen urged to tax the colonies he preferred, as he said, to leave thatto a bolder man. It is a pity that anyone was ever found bold enough todo it. 

Walpole's policy endured for a quarter of a century. He abandoned itonly after a bitter struggle in which he was attacked as sacrificing thenational honor for the sake of peace. Spain was an easy mark for thosewho wished to arouse the warlike spirit. She still persecuted and burnedheretics, a great cause of offense, in Protestant Britain, and she wasrigorous in excluding foreigners from trading with her colonies. To bethe one exception in this policy of exclusion was the privilege enjoyedby Britain. When the fortunes of Spain were low in 1713, she had beenforced not merely to cede Gibraltar but also to give to the British themonopoly of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves and theright to send one ship a year to trade at Porto Bello in South America. It seems a sufficiently ignoble bargain for a great nation to exact: themonopoly of carrying and selling cargoes of black men and the right tosend a single ship yearly to a Spanish colony. We can hardly imaginegrave diplomats of our day haggling over such terms. But the eighteenthcentury was not the twentieth. From the treaty the British expectedamazing results. The South Sea Company was formed to carry on a vasttrade with South America. One ship a year could, of course, carrylittle, but the ships laden with negroes could smuggle into thecolonies merchandise and the one trading ship could be and was reloadedfraudulently from lighters so that its cargo was multiplied manyfold. Out of the belief in huge profits from this trade with its exaggeratedvisions of profit grew in 1720 the famous South Sea Bubble whichinaugurated a period of frantic speculation in England. Worthless sharesin companies formed for trade in the South Seas sold at a thousand percent of their face value. It is a form of madness to which human greedis ever liable. Walpole's financial insight condemned from the first thewild outburst, and his common sense during the crisis helped to stem thetide of disaster. The South Sea Bubble burst partly because Spain stoodsternly on her own rights and punished British smugglers. Duringmany years the tension between the two nations grew. No doubtSpanish officials were harsh. Tales were repeated in England of theirbrutalities to British sailors who fell into their hands. In 1739 thestory of a certain Captain Jenkins that his ear had been cut off bySpanish captors and thrown in his face with an insulting message to hisgovernment brought matters to a climax. Events in other parts of Europesoon made the war general. When, in 1740, the young King of Prussia, Frederick II, came to the throne, his first act was to march an armyinto Silesia. To this province he had, he said, in the male line, a better claim than that of the woman, Maria Theresa, who had justinherited the Austrian crown. Frederick conquered Silesia and heldit. In 1744 he was allied with Spain and France, while Britain alliedherself with Austria, and thus Britain and France were again at war. 

In America both sides had long seen that the war was inevitable. Neverhad French opinion been more arrogant in asserting France's right toNorth America than after the Treaty of Utrecht. At the dinner-table ofthe Governor in Quebec there was incessant talk of Britain's incapacity, of the sheer luck by which she had blundered into the occupation ofgreat areas, while in truth she was weak through lack of union andorganization. A natural antipathy, it was said, existed betweenher colonies and herself; she was a monarchy while they were reallyindependent republics. France, on the other hand, had grown strongersince the last war. In 1713 she had retained the island of Cape Bretonand now she had made it a new menace to British power. Boston, whichhad breathed more freely after the fall of Port Royal in 1710, soon hadrenewed cause for alarm in regard to its shipping. On the southerncoast of Cape Breton, there was a spacious harbor with a narrow entranceeasily fortified, and here France began to build the fortress ofLouisbourg. It was planned on the most approved military principles ofthe time. Through its strength, the boastful talk went, France shouldmaster North America. The King sent out cannon, undertook to build ahospital, to furnish chaplains for the service of the Church, to helpeducation, and so on. Above all, he sent to Louisbourg soldiers. 

Reports of these wonderful things reached the English colonies andcaused fears and misgivings. New England believed that Louisbourgreflected the pomp and wealth of Versailles. The fortress was, intruth, slow in building and never more than a rather desolate outpostof France. It contained in all about four thousand people. During thethirty years of the long truce it became so strong that it was withouta rival on the Atlantic coast. The excellent harbor was a haven for thefishermen of adjacent waters and a base for French privateers, who werea terror to all the near trade routes of the Atlantic. On the militaryside Louisbourg seemed a success. But the French failed in their effortto colonize the island of Cape Breton on which the fortress stood. Todaythis island has great iron and other industries. There are coal-minesnear Louisbourg; and its harbor, long deserted after the fall of thepower of France, has now an extensive commerce. The island was indeedfabulously rich in coals and minerals. To use these things, however, wasto be the task of a new age of industry. The colonist of the eighteenthcentury--a merchant, a farmer, or a fur trader--thought that Cape Bretonwas bleak and infertile and refused to settle there. Louisbourg remaineda compact fortress with a good harbor, free from ice during most of theyear, but too much haunted by fog. It looked out on a much-traveled sea. But it remained set in the wilderness. 

Even if Louisbourg made up for the loss of Port Royal, this did not, however, console France for the cession of Acadia. The fixed ideaof those who shaped the policy of Canada was to recover Acadia andmeanwhile to keep its French settlers loyal to France. The Acadians werenot a promising people with whom to work. In Acadia, or Nova Scotia, asthe English called it, these backward people had slowly gathered duringa hundred years and had remained remote and neglected. They had clearedfarms, built primitive houses, planted orchards, and reared cattle. In1713 their number did not exceed two or three thousand, but already theywere showing the amazing fertility of the French race in America. Theywere prosperous but ignorant. Almost none of them could read. After thecession of their land to Britain in 1713 they had been guaranteed bytreaty the free exercise of their religion and they were Catholics to aman. It seems as if history need hardly mention a people so feebleand obscure. Circumstances, however, made the role of the Acadiansimportant. Their position was unique. The Treaty of Utrecht gave themthe right to leave Acadia within a year, taking with them their personaleffects. To this Queen Anne added the just privilege of selling theirlands and houses. Neither the Acadians themselves, however, nor theirnew British masters were desirous that they should leave. The Acadianswere content in their old homes; and the British did not wish them tohelp in building up the neighboring French stronghold on Cape Breton. Itthus happened that the French officials could induce few of the Acadiansto migrate and the English troubled them little. Having been resolute inacquiring Nova Scotia, Britain proceeded straightway to neglect it. Shebrought in few settlers. She kept there less than two hundred soldiersand even to these she paid so little attention that sometimes they hadno uniforms. The Acadians prospered, multiplied, and quarreled as to theboundaries of their lands. They rendered no military service, paid notaxes, and had the country to themselves as completely as if there hadbeen no British conquest. They rarely saw a British official. If theyasked the British Governor at Annapolis to settle for them some vexedquestion of rights or ownership he did so and they did not even pay afee. 

This is not, however, the whole story. England's neglect of the colonywas France's opportunity. Perhaps the French court did not followclosely what was going on in Acadia. The successive French Governors ofCanada at Quebec were, however, alert; and their policy was to incitethe Abenaki Indians on the New England frontier to harass the Englishsettlements, and to keep the Acadians an active factor in the support ofFrench plans. The nature of French intrigue is best seen in the careerof Sebastien Rale. He was a highly educated Jesuit priest. It was longa tradition among the Jesuits to send some of their best men asmissionaries among the Indians. Rale spent nearly the whole of his lifewith the Abenakis at the mission station of Norridgewock on the KennebecRiver. He knew the language and the customs of the Indians, attendedtheir councils, and dominated them by his influence. He was a modelmissionary, earnest and scholarly. But the Jesuit of that age was proneto be half spiritual zealot, half political intriguer. There is no doubtthat the Indians had a genuine fear that the English, with danger fromFrance apparently removed by the Treaty of Utrecht, would press claimsto lands about the Kennebec River in what is now the State of Maine, andthat they would ignore the claims of the Indians and drive them out. The Governor at Quebec helped to arouse the savages against the arrogantintruders. English border ruffians stirred the Indians by their drunkenoutrages and gave them real cause for anger. The savages knew onlyone way of expressing political unrest. They began murdering women andchildren in raids on lonely log cabins on the frontier. The inevitableresult was that in 1721 Massachusetts began a war on them which draggedon for years. Rale, inspired from Quebec, was believed to control theIndians and, indeed, boasted that he did so. At last the English struckat the heart of the trouble. In 1724 some two hundred determined menmade a silent advance through the forest to the mission village ofNorridgewock where Rale lived, and Rale died fighting the assailants. InEurope a French Jesuit such as he would have worked among diplomats andat the luxurious courts of kings. In America he worked among savagesunder the hard conditions of frontier life. The methods and the aims inboth cases were the same--by subtle and secret influence so to mold theactions of men that France should be exalted in power. In their highpolitics the French sometimes overreached themselves. To seize points ofvantage, to intrigue for influence, are not in themselves creative. Theymust be supported by such practical efforts as will assure an economicreserve adequate in the hour of testing. France failed partly becauseshe did not know how to lay sound industrial foundations which shouldgive substance to the brilliant planning of her leaders. 

To French influence of this kind the English opposed forces that werethe outcome of their national character and institutions. They werekeener traders than the French and had cheaper and better goods, withthe exception perhaps of French gunpowder and of French brandy, whichthe Indians preferred to English rum. Though the English were less alertand less brilliant than the French, the work that they did was moreenduring. Their settlements encroached ever more and more upon theforest. They found and tilled the good lands, traded and saved andgradually built up populous communities. The British colonies had twentytimes the population of Canada. The tide of their power crept in slowlybut it moved with the relentless force that has subsequently made nearlythe whole of North America English in speech and modes of thought. 

When, in 1744, open war between the two nations came at last in Europe, each prepared to spring at the other in America--and France sprangfirst. In Nova Scotia, on the narrow strait which separates the mainlandfrom the island of Cape Breton, the British had a weak little fishingsettlement called Canseau. Suddenly in May, 1744, when the British atCanseau had heard nothing of war, two armed vessels from Louisbourgwith six or seven hundred soldiers and sailors appeared before the poorlittle place and demanded its surrender. To this the eighty Britishdefenders agreed on the condition that they should be sent to Bostonwhich, as yet, had not heard of the war. Meanwhile they were taken toLouisbourg where they kept their eyes open. But the French continued intheir offensive. The one vital place held by the British in Nova Scotiawas Annapolis, at that time so neglected that the sandy ramparts hadcrumbled into the ditch supposed to protect them, and cows from theneighboring fields walked up the slope and looked down into the fort. It was Duvivier, the captor of Canseau, who attacked Annapolis. He hadhoped much for help from the Indians and the Acadians, but, though bothseemed eager, both failed him in action. Paul Mascarene, who defendedAnnapolis, was of Huguenot blood, which stimulated him to fight thebetter against the Catholic French. Boston sent him help, for thatlittle capital was deeply moved, and so Annapolis did not fall, thoughit was harassed during the whole summer of 1744; and New England; ina fever at the new perils of war, prepared a mighty stroke against theFrench. 

This expedition was to undertake nothing less than the capture ofLouisbourg itself. The colonial troops had been so often remindedof their inferiority to regular troops as fighting forces that, withprovincial docility, they had almost come to accept the estimate. It waswell enough for them to fight irregular French and Indian bands, but toattack a fortress defended by a French garrison was something that onlya few bold spirits among them could imagine. Such a spirit, however, wasWilliam Vaughan, a Maine trader, deeply involved in the fishing industryand confronted with ruin from hostile Louisbourg. Shirley, the Governorof Massachusetts, a man of eager ambition, took up the proposal andworked out an elaborate plan. The prisoners who had been captured atCanseau by the French and interned at Louisbourg now arrived at Bostonand told of bad conditions in the fortress. In January, 1745, Shirleycalled a session of the General Court, the little parliament ofMassachusetts, and, having taken the unusual step of pledging themembers to secrecy, he unfolded his plan. But it proved too bold for theprudent legislators, and they voted it down. Meanwhile New England tradewas suffering from ships which used Louisbourg as a base. At lengthpublic opinion was aroused and, when Shirley again called the GeneralCourt, a bare majority endorsed his plan. Soon thereafter New Englandwas aflame. Appeals for help were sent to England and, it is said, even to Jamaica. Shirley counted on aid from a British squadron, underCommodore Peter Warren, in American waters, but at first Warren had noinstructions to help such a plan. This disappointment did not keep NewEngland from going on alone. In the end Warren received instructions togive the necessary substantial aid, and he established a strict blockadewhich played a vital part in the siege of the French fortress. 

In this hour of deadly peril Louisbourg was in not quite happy case. Some of the French officers, who, would otherwise have starved on theirlow pay, were taking part in illicit trade and were neglecting theirduties. Just after Christmas in 1744, there had been a mutiny over apetty question of butter and bacon. Here, as in all French colonies, there were cliques, with the suspicions and bitterness which theyinvolve. The Governor Duchambon, though brave enough, was a man of poorjudgment in a position that required both tact and talent. The Englishdid not make the mistake of delaying their preparations. They wereindeed so prompt that they arrived at Canseau early in April and had towait for the ice to break up in Gabarus Bay, near Louisbourg, where theyintended to land. Here, on April 30, the great fleet appeared. A watcherin Louisbourg counted ninety-six ships standing off shore. With littleopposition from the French the amazing army landed at Freshwater Cove. 

Then began an astonishing siege. The commander of the New Englandforces, William Pepperrell, was a Maine trader, who dealt in a littleof everything, fish, groceries, lumber, ships, land. Though innocent ofmilitary science, he was firm and tactful. A British officer with strictmilitary ideas could not, perhaps, have led that strange army withsuccess. Pepperrell knew that he had good fighting material; he knew, too, how to handle it. In his army of some four thousand men there wasprobably not one officer with a regular training. Few of his force hadproper equipment, but nearly all his men were handy on a ship as well ason land. In Louisbourg were about two thousand defenders, of whom onlyfive or six hundred were French regulars. These professional soldierswatched with contempt not untouched with apprehension the breaches ofmilitary precedent in the operations of the besiegers. Men harnessedlike horses dragged guns through morasses into position, exposedthemselves recklessly, and showed the skill, initiative, and resolutionwhich we have now come to consider the dominant qualities of the Yankee. In time Warren arrived with a British squadron and then the French werepuzzled anew. They could not understand the relations between the fleetand the army, which seemed to them to belong to different nations. TheNew Englanders appeared to be under a Governor who was something likean independent monarch. He had drawn up elaborate plans for his army, comical in their apparent disregard of the realities of war, namingthe hour when the force should land "unobserved" before Louisbourg, instructing Pepperrell to surprise that place while every one wasasleep, and so on. Kindly Providence was expected even to givecontinuous good weather. "The English appear to have enlisted Heaven intheir interests, " said a despairing resident of the town; "so long asthe expedition lasted they had the most beautiful weather in the world. "There were no storms; the winds were favorable; fog, so common on thatcoast, did not creep in; and the sky was clear. 

Among the French the opinion prevailed that the English colonists wereferocious pirates plotting eternally to destroy the power of France. Their liberty, however, it was well understood, had made them strong;and now they quickly became formidable soldiers. Their shooting, bad atfirst, was, in the end, superb. Sometimes in their excess of zeal theyovercharged their cannon so that the guns burst. But they managed to hitpractically every house in Louisbourg, and since most of the houses wereof wood there was constant danger of fire. Some of the French foughtwell. Even children of ten and twelve helped to carry ammunition. 

The Governor Duchambon tried to keep up the spirits of the garrison byabsurd exaggeration of British losses. He was relying much on helpfrom France, but only a single ship reached port. On May 19, 1745, thebesieged saw approaching Louisbourg a great French ship of war, theVigilant, long looked for, carrying 64 guns and 560 men. A northwestwind was blowing which would have brought her quickly into the harbor. The British fleet was two and a half leagues away to leeward. The greatship, thinking herself secure, did not even stop to communicate withLouisbourg but wantonly gave chase to a small British privateer whichshe encountered near the shore. By skillful maneuvering the smaller shipled the French frigate out to sea again, and then the British squadroncame up. From five o'clock to ten in the evening anxious men inLouisbourg watched the fight and saw at last the Vigilant surrenderafter losing eighty men. This disaster broke the spirit of thedefenders, who were already short of ammunition. When they knew that theBritish were preparing for a combined assault by land and sea, they madeterms and surrendered on the 17th of June, after the siege had lastedfor seven weeks. The garrison marched out with the honors of war, to betransported to France, together with such of the civilian population aswished to go. 

The British squadron then sailed into the harbor. Pepperrell's strangearmy, ragged and war-worn after the long siege, entered the town by thesouth gate. They had fought as crusaders, for to many of them CatholicLouisbourg was a stronghold of Satan. Whitfield, the great Englishevangelist, then in New England, had given them a motto--Nil desperandumChristo duce. There is a story that one of the English chaplains, oldParson Moody, a man of about seventy, had brought with him from Bostonan axe and was soon found using it to hew down the altar and images inthe church at Louisbourg. If the story is true, it does something toexplain the belief of the French in the savagery of their opponents whowould so treat things which their enemies held to be most sacred. TheFrench had met this fanaticism with a savagery equally intense anddirected not against things but against the flesh of men. An inhabitantof Louisbourg during the siege describes the dauntless bravery of theIndian allies of the French during the siege: "Full of hatred for theEnglish whose ferocity they abhor, they destroy all upon whom they canlay hands. " He does not have even a word of censure for the savages whotortured and killed in cold blood a party of some twenty English who hadbeen induced to surrender on promise of life. The French declared thatnot they but the savages were responsible for such barbarities, and theEnglish retorted that the French must control their allies. Feeling onsuch things was naturally bitter on both sides and did much to decidethat the war between the two nations should be to the death. 

The fall of Louisbourg brought great exultation to the English colonies. It was a unique event, the first prolonged and successful siege thathad as yet taken place north of Mexico. An odd chance of war had decreedthat untrained soldiers should win a success so prodigious. New England, it is true, had incurred a heavy expenditure, and her men, having doneso much, naturally imagined that they had done everything, and talkedas if the siege was wholly their triumph. They were, of course, greatlyaided by the fleet under Warren, and the achievement was a jointtriumph of army and navy. New England alone, however, had the credit ofconceiving and of arousing others to carry out a brilliant exploit. 

Victory inspires to further victory. The British, exultant afterLouisbourg, were resolved to make an end of French power in America. "Delenda est Canada!" cried Governor Shirley to the General Court ofMassachusetts, and the response of the members was the voting of men andmoney on a scale that involved the bankruptcy of the Commonwealth. Other colonies, too, were eager for a cause which had won a success sodazzling, and some eight thousand men were promised for an attack onCanada, proud and valiant Massachusetts contributing nearly one-half ofthe total number. The old plan was to be followed. New York was to leadin an attack by way of Lake Champlain. New England was to collect itsforces at Louisbourg. Here a British fleet should come, carrying eightbattalions of British regulars, and, with Warren in command, the wholearmada should proceed to Quebec. Nothing came of this elaborate scheme. Neither the promised troops nor the fleet arrived from England. Britishministers broke faith with the colonists in the adventure with quite toolight a heart. 

Stories went abroad of disorder and dissension in Louisbourg under theEnglish and of the weakness of the place. Disease broke out. Hundredsof New England soldiers died and their bones now lie in graves, unmarkedand forgotten, on the seashore by the deserted fortress; at almost anytime still their bones, washed down by the waves, may be picked up onthe beach. There were sullen mutterings of discontent at Louisbourg. Soldiers grumbled over grievances which were sometimes fantastic. Rumor had been persistent in creating a legend that vast wealth, theaccumulated plunder brought in by French privateers, was stored inthe town. From this source a rich reward in booty was expected by thesoldiers. In fact, when Louisbourg was taken, all looting was forbiddenand the soldiers were put on guard over houses which they had hoped torob. For the soldiers there were no prizes. Louisbourg was poor. Thesailors, on the other hand, were fortunate. As a decoy Warren kept theFrench flag flying over the harbor, and French ships sailed in, one ofthem with a vast treasure of gold and silver coin and ingots from Peruvalued at 600, 000 pounds. One other prize was valued at 200, 000 poundsand a third at 140, 000 pounds. Warren's own share of prize moneyamounted to 60, 000 pounds, while Pepperrell, the unrewarded leader ofthe sister service, piled up a personal debt of 10, 000 pounds. Quarrelsoccurred between soldiers and sailors, and in these the New Englanderssoon proved by no means the cowards which complacent superiority inEngland considered them; rather, as an enlightened Briton said, "If theyhad pickaxe and spade they would dig a way to Hell itself and storm thatstronghold. "

Behind all difficulties was the question whether, having takenLouisbourg, the British could continue to hold it. France answered witha resolute "No. " To retake it she fitted out a great fleet. Nearly halfher navy gathered under the Duc d'Anville and put to sea on June 20, 1746. If in the previous summer God had helped the English with goodweather, by a similar proof His face now appeared turned a second timeagainst the French. In the great array there were more than sixty ships, which were to gather at Chebucto, now Halifax, harbor, and to be joinedthere by four great ships of war from the West Indies. Everything wentwrong. On the voyage across the Atlantic there was a prolonged calm, followed by a heavy squall. Several ships were struck by lightning. Amagazine on the Mars blew up, killing ten and wounding twenty-one men. Pestilence broke out. As a crowning misfortune, the fleet was scatteredby a terrific storm. After great delay d'Anville's ship reachedChebucto, then a wild and lonely spot. The expected fleet from the WestIndies had indeed come, but had gone, since the ships from France, long overdue, had not arrived. D'Anville died suddenly--some said ofapoplexy, others of poison self-administered. More ships arrived full ofsick men and short of provisions. D'Estournel, who succeeded d'Anvillein chief command, in despair at the outlook killed himself with hisown sword after the experience of only a day or two in his post. LaJonquiere, a competent officer, afterwards Governor of Canada, thenled the expedition. The pestilence still raged, and from two to threethousand men died. One day a Boston sloop boldly entered Chebucto harborto find out what was going on. It is a wonder that the British didnot descend upon the stricken French and destroy them. In October, LaJonquiere, having pulled his force together, planned to win the smallsuccess of taking Annapolis, but again storms scattered his ships. Atthe end of October he finally decided to return to France. But therewere more heavy storms; and one French crew was so near starvation thatonly a chance meeting with a Portuguese ship kept them from killingand eating five English prisoners. Only a battered remnant of the fleeteventually reached home ports. 

The disaster did not crush France. In May of the next spring, 1747, a new fleet under La Jonquiere set out to retake Louisbourg. Near thecoast of Europe, however, Admirals Anson and Warren met and completelydestroyed it, taking prisoner La Jonquiere himself. This disastereffected what was really the most important result of the war: it madethe British fleet definitely superior to the French. During the struggleEngland had produced a new Drake, who attacked Spain in the spirit ofthe sea-dogs of Elizabeth. Anson had gone in 1740 into the Pacific, where he seized and plundered Spanish ships as Drake had done nearly twocenturies earlier; and in 1744, when he had been given up for lost, hecompleted the great exploit of sailing round the world and bringing homerich booty. Such feats went far to give Britain that command of the seaon which her colonial Empire was to depend. 

The issue of the war hung more on events that occurred in Europe than inAmerica, and France had made gains as well as suffered losses. It wason the sea that she had sustained her chief defeats. In India she hadgained by taking the English factory at Madras; and in the Low Countriesshe was still aggressive. Indeed, during the war England had been morehostile to Spain than to France. She had not taken very seriously hersupport of the colonies in their attack on Louisbourg and she had failedthem utterly in their designs on Canada. It is true that in EuropeEngland had grave problems to solve. Austria, with which she was allied, desired her to fight until Frederick of Prussia should give up theprovince of Silesia seized by him in 1740. In this quarrel England hadno vital interest. France had occupied the Austrian Netherlands and hadrefused to hand back to Austria this territory unless she received CapeBreton in return. Britain might have kept Cape Breton if she would haveallowed France to keep Belgium. This, in loyalty to Austria, she wouldnot do. Accordingly peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 on theagreement that each side should restore to the other its conquests, notmerely in Europe but also in America and Asia. Thus it happened that theBritish flag went up again at Madras while it came down at Louisbourg. 

Boston was of course angry at the terms of the treaty. What sacrificeshad Massachusetts not made! The least of them was the great burden ofdebt which she had piled up. Her sons had borne what Pepperrell called"almost incredible hardships. " They had landed cannon on a lee shorewhen the great waves pounded to pieces their boats and when men wadingbreast high were crushed by the weight of iron. Harnessed two and threehundred to a gun, they had dragged the pieces one after the other overrocks and through bog and slime, and had then served them in the openunder the fire of the enemy. New Englanders had died like "rotten sheep"in Louisbourg. The graves of nearly a thousand of them lay on the bleakpoint outside the wall. What they had gained by this sacrifice must nowbe abandoned. A spirit of discontent with the mother country went abroadand, after this sacrifice of colonial interests, never wholly died out. It is not without interest to note in passing that Gridley, the engineerwho drew the plan of the defenses of Louisbourg, thirty years laterdrew those of Bunker Hill to protect men of the English race who foughtagainst England. 

Every one knew that the peace of 1748 was only a truce and Britain beganpromptly new defenses. Into the spacious harbor of Chebucto, which threeyears earlier had been the scene of the sorrows of d'Anville's fleet, there sailed in June, 1749, a considerable British squadron bent ona momentous errand. It carried some thousands of settlers, EdwardCornwallis, a governor clothed with adequate authority, and a forcesufficient for the defense of the new foundation. Cornwallis wasdelighted with the prospect. "All the officers agree the harbour isthe finest they have ever seen"--this, of Halifax harbor with the greatBedford Basin, opening beyond it, spacious enough to contain the fleetsof the world. "The Country is one continuous Wood, no clear spot to beseen or heard of. D'Anville's fleet... Cleared no ground; they encampedtheir men on the beach. " The garrison was withdrawn from Louisbourgand soon arrived at Halifax, with a vast quantity of stores. A town wasmarked out; lots were drawn for sites; and every one knew where he mightbuild his house. There were prodigious digging, chopping, hammering. "Ishall be able to get them all Houses before winter, " wrote Cornwallischeerily. Firm military discipline, indeed, did wonders. Before wintercame, a town had been created, and with the town a fortress which fromthat time has remained the chief naval and military stronghold of GreatBritain in North America. At Louisbourg some two hundred miles farthereast on the coast, France could reestablish her military strength, butnow Louisbourg had a rival and each was resolved to yield nothing to theother. The founding of Halifax was in truth the symbol of the renewal ofthe struggle for a continent. 

CHAPTER V. The Great West

In days before the railway had made possible a bulky commerce byoverland routes, rivers furnished the chief means of access to inlandregions. The fame of the Ganges, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danubeshows the part which great rivers have played in history. Of NorthAmerica's four greatest river systems, the two in the far north havebecome known in times so recent that their place in history is notyet determined. One of them, the Mackenzie, a mighty stream some twothousand miles long, flows into the Arctic Ocean through what remainschiefly a wilderness. The waters of the other, the Saskatchewan, discharge into Hudson Bay more than a thousand miles from their source, flowing through rich prairie land which is still but scantily peopled. On the Saskatchewan, as on the remaining two systems, the St. Lawrenceand the Mississippi, the French were the pioneers. Though today theregions drained by these four rivers are dominated by the rival race, the story which we now follow is one of romantic enterprise in which thehonors are with France. 

More perhaps by accident than by design had the French been the firstto settle on the St. Lawrence. Fishing vessels had hovered round theentrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence for years before, in 1535, theFrench sailor, Jacques Cartier, advanced up the river as far as the footof the torrential rapids where now stands the city of Montreal. Cartier was seeking a route to the Far East. He half believed that thisimpressive waterway drained the plains of China and that around the nextbend he might find the busy life of an oriental city. The time camewhen it was known that a great sea lay between America and Asia and themystery of the pathway to this sea long fascinated the pioneers ofthe St. Lawrence. Canada was a colony, a trading-post, a mission, the favorite field of Jesuit activity, but it was also the land whichoffered by way of the St. Lawrence a route leading illimitably westwardto the Far East. 

One other route rivaled the St. Lawrence in promise, and that wasthe Mississippi. The two rivers are essentially different in theirapproaches and in type. The mouth of the St. Lawrence opens directlytowards Europe and of all American rivers lies nearest to the seafaringpeoples of Europe. Since it flows chiefly in a rocky bed, its coursechanges little; its waters are clear, and they become icy cold as theyapproach the sea and mingle with the tide which flows into the greatGulf of St. Lawrence from the Arctic regions. The Mississippi, on theother hand, is a turbid, warm stream, flowing through soft lands. Itsshifting channel is divided at its mouth by deltas created from thevast quantity of soil which the river carries in its current. On thelow-lying, forest-clad, northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico it was noteasy to find the mouth of the Mississippi by approaching it from thesea. The voyage there from France was long and difficult; and, moreover, Spain claimed the lands bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and declaredherself ready to drive out all intruders. 

Nature, it is clear, dictated that, if France was to build up her powerin the interior of the New World, it was the valley of the St. Lawrencewhich she should first occupy. Time has shown the riches of the landsdrained by the St. Lawrence. On no other river system in the world isthere now such a multitude of great cities. The modern traveler whoadvances by this route to the sources of the river beyond the GreatLakes surveys wonders ever more impressive. Before his view appearin succession Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth, and many other cities and towns, with millionsin population and an aggregate of wealth so vast as to stagger theimagination. Step by step had the French advanced from Quebec to theinterior. Champlain was on Lake Huron in 1615, and there the Jesuitssoon had a flourishing mission to the Huron Indians. They had only tofollow the shore of Lake Huron to come to the St. Mary's River bearingtowards the sea the chilly waters of Lake Superior. On this river, amuch frequented fishing ground of the natives, they founded the missionof Sainte Marie du Saut. Farther to the south, on the narrow openingconnecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, grew up the post known asMichilimackinac. It was then inevitable that explorers and missionariesshould press on into both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. By the timethat Frontenac came first to Canada in 1672 the French had a post calledSt. Esprit on the south shore of Lake Superior near its western end andthey had also passed westward from Lake Michigan and founded postson both the Illinois and the Wisconsin Rivers which flow into theMississippi. 

France had placed on record her claim to the whole of the Great West. Ona June morning in 1671 there had been a striking scene at Sainte Mariedu Saut. The French had summoned a great throng of Indians to the spot. There, with impressive ceremony, Saint-Lusson, an officer from Canada, had set up a cedar post on which was a plate engraved with the royalarms, and proclaimed Louis XIV lord of all the Indian tribes and of allthe lands, rivers, and lakes, discovered and to be discovered in theregion stretching from the Atlantic to that other mysterious sea beyondthe spreading lands of the West. Henceforth at their peril would thenatives disobey the French King, or other states encroach upon these hislands. A Jesuit priest followed Saint-Lusson with a description to thesavages of their new lord, the King of France. He was master of all theother rulers of the world. At his word the earth trembled. He could setearth and sea on fire by the blaze of his cannon. The priest knew thetemper of his savage audience and told of the King's warriors coveredwith the blood of his enemies, of the rivers of blood which flowed fromtheir wounds, of the King's countless prisoners, of his riches andhis power, so great that all the world obeyed him. The savages gavedelighted shouts at the strange ceremony, but of its real meaning theyknew nothing. What they understood was that the French seemed to be goodfriends who brought them muskets, hatchets, cloth, and especially theloved but destructive firewater which the savage palate ever craved. 

The mystery of the Great Lakes once solved, there still remained thatof the Western Sea. The St. Lawrence flowed eastward. Another river musttherefore be found flowing westward. The French were eager listenerswhen the savages talked of a mighty river in the west flowing to thesea. They meant, as we now suppose, the Mississippi. There are vaguestories of Frenchmen on the Mississippi at an earlier date; but, howeverthis may be, it is certain that in the summer of 1673 Louis Joliet, theson of a wagon-maker of Quebec, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest, reached and descended the great river from the mouth of the Wisconsin toa point far past the mouth of the Ohio. 

France thus planted herself on the Mississippi, though there heroccupation was less complete and thorough than it was on the St. Lawrence. Distance was an obstacle; it was a far cry from Quebec byland, and from France the voyage by sea through the Gulf of Mexicowas hardly less difficult. The explorer La Salle tried both routes. In1681-1682 he set out from Montreal, reached the Mississippi overland, and descended to its mouth. Two years later he sailed from Francewith four ships bound for the mouth of the river, there to establish acolony; but before achieving his aim he was murdered in a treacherousattack led by his own countrymen. 

It was Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, who first made good France'sclaim to the Mississippi. He reached the river by sea in 1699 andascended to a point some eighty miles beyond the present city of NewOrleans. Farther east, on Biloxi Bay, he built Fort Maurepas and plantedhis first colony. Spain disliked this intrusion; but Spain soon to beherself ruled, as France then was, by a Bourbon king--did not proveirreconcilable and slowly France built up a colony in the south. Itwas in 1718 that Iberville's brother, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur deBienville, founded New Orleans, destined to become in time one of thegreat cities of North America. Its beginnings were not propitious. The historian Charlevoix describes it as being in 1721 a low-lying, malarious place, infested by snakes and alligators, and consisting of ahundred wretched hovels. 

In spite of this dreary outlook, it was still true that France, plantedat the mouth of the Mississippi, controlled the greatest waterway in theworld. Soon she had scattered settlements stretching northward to theOhio and the Missouri, the one river reaching eastward almost to thewaters of the St. Lawrence system, the other flowing out of the westernplains from its source in the Rocky Mountains. The old mystery, however, remained, for the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, intoAtlantic waters already well known. The route to the Western Sea wasstill to be found. 

It was easy enough for France to record a sweeping claim to the West, but to make good this claim she needed a chain of posts, which shouldalso be forts, linking the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence and strongenough to impress the Indians whose country she had invaded. At firstshe had reached the interior by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron, and in that northern country her position was secure enough through herposts on the upper lakes. The route farther south by Lake Ontario andLake Erie was more difficult. The Iroquois menaced Niagara and longrefused to let France have a footing there to protect her pathwayto Lake Erie and the Ohio Valley. It was not until 1720, a periodcomparatively late, that the French managed to have a fort at the mouthof the Niagara. On the Detroit River, the next strategic point on theway westward, they were established earlier. Just after Frontenac diedin 1698, La Mothe Cadillac urged that there should be built on thisriver a fort and town which might be made the center of all the tradinginterests west of Lake Erie. End the folly, he urged, of going stillfarther afield among the Indians and teaching them the French languageand French modes of thought. Leave the Indians to live their own typeof life, to hunt and to fish. They need European trade and they havevaluable furs to exchange. Encourage them to come to the French atDetroit and see that they go nowhere else by not allowing any otherposts in the western country. Cadillac was himself a keen if secretparticipant in the profits of the fur trade and hoped to be placedin command at Detroit and there to become independent of control fromQuebec. Detroit was founded in 1701; and though for a long time it didnot thrive, the fact that on the site has grown up one of the greatindustrial cities of modern times shows that Cadillac had read arightthe meaning of the geography of North America. 

When France was secure at Niagara and at Detroit, two problems stillremained unsolved. One was that of occupying the valley of the Ohio, thewaters of which flow westward almost from the south shore of Lake Erieuntil they empty into the vaster flood of the Mississippi. Here therewas a lion in the path, for the English claimed this region as naturallythe hinterland of the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Whathappened on the Ohio we shall see in a later chapter. The other greatproblem, to be followed here, was to explore the regions which laybeyond the Mississippi. These spread into a remote unknown, unexploredby the white man, and might ultimately lead to the Western Sea. We mighthave supposed that France's farther adventure into the West would havebeen from the Mississippi up its great tributary the Missouri, whichflows eastward from the eternal snows of the Rocky Mountains. Always, however, the uncertain temper of the many Indian tribes in this regionmade the advance difficult. The tribes inhabiting the west bank ofthe Mississippi were especially restless and savage. The Sioux, inparticular, made life perilous for the French at their posts near themouth of the Missouri. 

It thus happened that the white man first reached the remoter West byway of regions farther north. It became easy enough to coast along thenorth and the south shore of Lake Superior, easy enough to find riverswhich fed the great system of the St. Lawrence or of the Mississippi. These, however, would not solve the mystery. A river flowing westwardwas still to be sought. Thus, both in pursuit of the fur trade andin quest of the Western Sea, the French advanced westward from LakeSuperior. Where now stands the city of Fort William there flows intoLake Superior the little stream called still by its Indian name ofKaministiquia. There the French had long maintained a trading-post fromwhich they made adventurous journeys northward and westward. 

The rugged regions still farther north had already been explored, atleast in outline. There lay the great inland sea known as Hudson Bay. French and English had long disputed for its mastery. By 1670 theEnglish had found trade to Hudson Bay so promising that they thencreated the Hudson's Bay Company, which remains one of the great tradingcorporations of the world. With the English on Hudson Bay, New Francewas between English on the north and English on the south and did notlike it. On Hudson Bay the English showed the same characteristics whichthey had shown in New England. They were not stirred by vivid imaginingsof what might be found westward beyond the low-lying coast of the greatinland sea. They came for trade, planted themselves at the mouths of thechief rivers, unpacked their goods, and waited for the natives to cometo barter with them. For many years the natives came, since theymust have the knives, hatchets, and firearms of Europe. To share thisprofitable trade the French, now going overland to the north fromQuebec, now sailing into Hudson Bay by the Straits, attacked theEnglish; and on those dreary waters, long before the Great West wasknown, there had been many a naval battle, many a hand-to-hand fight forforts and their rich prize of furs. 

The chief French hero in this struggle was that son of Charles Le Moyneof Montreal, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who ended his days in thetask of founding the French colony of Louisiana. He was perhaps the mostnotable of all the adventurous leaders whom New France produced. He wasfirst on Hudson Bay in the late summer of 1686, in a party of about ahundred men, led by the Chevalier de Troyes, who had marched overlandfrom Quebec through the wilderness. The English on the Bay, with acharter from King Charles II, the friend of the French, and in a time ofprofound peace under his successor, thought themselves secure. They nowhad, however, a rude awakening. In the dead of night the Frenchmen fellupon Fort Hayes, captured its dazed garrison, and looted the place. The same fate befell all the other English posts on the Bay. Ibervillegained a rich store of furs as his share of the plunder and returnedwith it to Quebec in 1687, just at the time when La Salle, that otherpioneer of France, was struck down in the distant south by a murderer'shand. 

Iberville was, above all else, a sailor. The easiest route to Hudson Baywas by way of the sea. More than once after his first experience he ledto the Bay a naval expedition. His exploits are still remembered withpride in French naval annals. In 1697 he sailed the Pelican throughthe ice-floes of Hudson Straits. He was attacked by three Englishmerchantmen, with one hundred and twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the English ships escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he captured. That autumn the hardy corsair was in France with agreat booty from the furs which the English had laboriously gathered. 

The triumph of the French on Hudson Bay was short-lived. Their exploits, though brilliant and daring, were more of the nature of raids thanattempts to settle and explore. They did no more than the English toascend the Nelson or other rivers to find what lay beyond; and in 1718, by the Treaty of Utrecht, as we have already seen, they gave up allclaim to Hudson Bay and yielded that region to the English. 

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, was a member ofthe Canadian noblesse, a son of the Governor of Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence. He was born in 1685 and had taken part in the border warfareof the days of Queen Anne. He was a member of the raiding party ledagainst New England by Hertel de Rouville in 1704 and may have been oneof those who burst in on the little town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, and either butchered or carried off as prisoners most of theinhabitants. Shortly afterwards we find him a participant in warfare ofa less ignoble type. In 1706 he went to France and became an ensign ina regiment of grenadiers. Those were the days when Marlborough washammering and destroying the armies of Louis XIV. La Verendrye, tookpart in the last of the series of great battles, the bloody conflictat Malplaquet in 1709. He received a bullet wound through the body, wasleft for dead on the field, fell into the hands of the enemy, and forfifteen months was a captive. On his release he was too poor to maintainhimself as an officer in France and soon returned to Canada, where heserved as an officer in a colonial regiment until the peace of 1713. Then the ambitious young man, recently married, with a growing familyand slight resources, had to work out a career suited to his genius. 

His genius was that of an explorer; his task, which fully occupiedhis alert mind, was that of finding the long dreamed of passage tothe Western Sea. The venture certainly offered fascinations. Noyon, afellow-townsman of La Verendrye at Three Rivers, had brought back fromthe distant Lake of the Woods, in 1716, a glowing account, told tohim by the natives, of walled cities, of ships and cannon, and ofwhite-bearded men who lived farther west. In 1720 the Jesuit Charlevoix, already familiar with Canada, came out from France, went to theMississippi country, and reported that an attempt to find the path tothe Western Sea might be made either by way of the Missouri or farthernorth through the country of the Sioux west of Lake Superior. Bothroutes involved going among warlike native tribes engaged in incessantand bloody struggles with each other and not unlikely to turn onthe white intruder. Memorial after memorial to the French court forassistance resulted at last in serious effort, but effort handicappedbecause the court thought that a monopoly of the fur trade was the onlyinducement required to promote the work of discovery. 

La Verendrye was more eager to reach the Western Sea than he was totrade. To outward seeming, however, he became just a fur trader and asuccessful one. We find him, in 1726, at the trading-post of Nipigon, not far from the lake of that name, near the north shore of LakeSuperior. From this point it was not very difficult to reach the shoreof one great sea, Hudson Bay, but that was not the Western Sea whichfired his imagination. Incessantly he questioned the savages with whomhe traded about what lay in the unknown West. His zeal was kindled anewby the talk of an Indian named Ochagach. This man said that he himselfhad been on a great lake lying west of Lake Superior, that out of itflowed a river westward, that he had paddled down this river until hecame to water which, as La Verendrye understood, rose and fell likethe tide. Farther, to the actual mouth of the river, the savage had notgone, for fear of enemies, but he had been told that it emptied into agreat body of salt water upon the shores of which lived many people. We may be sure that La Verendrye read into the words of the savage themeaning which he himself desired and that in reality the Indian wasdescribing only the waters which flow into Lake Winnipeg. 

La Verendrye was all eagerness. Soon we find him back at Quebec stirringby his own enthusiasm the zeal of the Marquis de Beauharnois, theGovernor of Canada, and begging for help to pay and equip a hundred menfor the great enterprise in the West. The Governor did what he could butwas unable to move the French court to give money. The sole help offeredwas a monopoly of the fur trade in the region to be explored, a doubtfulgift, since it angered all the traders excluded from the monopoly. LaVerendrye, however, was able, by promising to hand over most of theprofits, to persuade merchants in Montreal to equip him with thenecessary men and merchandise. 

There followed a period of high hopes and of heartbreaking failure. In 1731 La Verendrye set out for the West with three sons, a nephew, aJesuit priest, the Indian Ochagach as guide--a party numbering in allabout fifty. He intended to build trading-posts as he went westward andto make the last post always a base from which to advance still farther. His difficulties read like those of Columbus. His men not only dislikedthe hard work which was inevitable but were haunted by superstitiousfears of malignant fiends in the unknown land who were ready to punishthe invaders of their secrets. The route lay across the rough countrybeyond Lake Superior. There were many long portages over which his menmust carry the provisions and heavy stores for trade. At lengththe party reached Rainy Lake, and out of Rainy Lake the waters flowwestward. The country seemed delightful. Fish and game were abundant, and it was not hard to secure a rich store of furs. On the shore of thelake, in a charming meadow surrounded by oak trees, La Verendrye built atrading-post on waters flowing to the west, naming it Fort St. Pierre. 

The voyageurs could now travel westward with the current. It is certainthat other Frenchmen had preceded them in that region, but this is thefirst voyage of discovery of which we have any details. Escorted by animposing array of fifty canoes of Indians, La Verendrye floated downRainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and here, on a beautiful peninsulajutting out into the lake, he built another post, Fort St. Charles. It must have seemed imposing to the natives. On walls one hundred feetsquare were four bastions and a watchtower; evidence of the perennialneed of alertness and strength in the Indian country. There were achapel, houses for the commandant and the priest, a powder-magazine, a storehouse, and other buildings. La Verendrye cleared some land andplanted wheat, and was thus the pioneer in the mighty wheat productionof the West. Fish and game were abundant and the outlook was smiling. Bythis time the second winter of La Verendrye's adventurous journeyingwas near, but even the cold of that hard region could not chill hiseagerness. He himself waited at Fort St. Charles but his eldest son, Jean Baptiste, set out to explore still farther. 

We may follow with interest the little group of Frenchmen and Indianguides as they file on snowshoes along the surface of the frozen riveror over the deep snow of the silent forest on, ever on, to the West. They are the first white men of whom we have certain knowledge topress beyond the Lake of the Woods into that great Northwest so full ofmeaning for the future. The going was laborious and the distances seemedlong, for on their return they reported that they had gone a hundred andfifty leagues, though in truth the distance was only a hundred and fiftymiles. Then at last they stood on the shores of a vast body of water, ice-bound and forbidding as it lay in the grip of winter. It opened outillimitably westward. But it was not the Western Sea, for its waterswere fresh. The shallow waters of Lake Winnipeg empty not into theWestern Sea but into the Atlantic by way of Hudson Bay. Its shores thenwere deserted and desolate, and even to this day they are but scantilypeopled. In that wild land there was no hint of the populous East ofwhich La Verendrye had dreamed. 

At the mouth of the Winnipeg River, where it enters Lake Winnipeg, LaVerendrye built Fort Maurepas, named after the French minister who wasin charge of the colonies and who was influential at court. The name nodoubt expresses some clinging hope which La Verendrye still cherished ofobtaining help from the King. Already he was hard pressed for resources. Where were the means to come from for this costly work of buildingforts? From time to time he sent eastward canoes laden with furs which, after a long and difficult journey, reached Montreal. The traders towhom the furs were consigned sold them and kept the money as their ownon account of their outlay. La Verendrye in the far interior could notpay his men and would soon be without goods to trade with the Indians. After having repeatedly begged for help but in vain, he made a rapidjourney to Montreal and implored the Governor to aid an enterprise whichmight change the outlook of the whole world. The Governor was willingbut without the consent of France could not give help. By promising thetraders, who were now partners in his monopoly, profits of one hundredper cent on their outlay, La Verendrye at last secured what he needed. His canoes were laden with goods, and soon brawny arms were drivingonce again the graceful craft westward. He had offered a new hostageto fortune by arranging that his fourth son, a lad of eighteen, shouldfollow him in the next year. 

La Verendrye pressed on eagerly in advance of the heavy-laden canoes. Grim news met him soon after he reached Fort St. Charles on the Lake ofthe Woods. His nephew La Jemeraye, a born leader of men, who was at themost advanced station, Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, had broken downfrom exposure, anxiety, and overwork, and had been laid in a lonelygrave in the wilderness. Nearly all pioneer work is a record of tragedyand its gloom lies heavy on the career of La Verendrye. A little latercame another sorrow-laden disaster. La Verendrye sent his eldest sonJean back to Rainy Lake to hurry the canoes from Montreal which werebringing needed food. The party landed on a peninsula at the dischargeof Rainy Lake into Rainy River, fell into an ambush of Sioux Indians, and were butchered to a man. This incident reveals the chief cause ofthe slow progress in discovery in the Great West: the temper of thesavages was always uncertain. 

There is no sign that La Verendrye wavered in his great hope even whenhe realized that the Winnipeg River was not the river flowing westwardwhich he sought. We know now that the northern regions of the Americancontinent east of the Rocky Mountains are tilted towards the east andthe north and that in all its vast spaces there is no great river whichflows to the west. La Verendrye, however, ignorant of this dictate ofnature, longed to paddle with the stream towards the west. The Red Riverflows from the south into Lake Winnipeg at a point near the mouth ofthe Winnipeg River. Up the Red River went La Verendrye and found atributary, the Assiniboine, flowing into it from the west. At the pointof junction, where has grown up the city of Winnipeg, he built a tinyfort, called Fort Rouge, a name still preserved in a suburb of themodern Winnipeg. The explorers went southward on the Red River, andthen went westward on the Assiniboine River only to find the waterspersistently flowing against them and no definite news of other watersleading to the Western Sea. On the Assiniboine, near the site of thepresent town of Portage la Prairie in Manitoba, La Verendrye built FortLa Reine. Its name is evidence still perhaps of hopes for aid throughthe Queen if not through the King of France. 

In 1737 La Verendrye made once more the long journey to Montreal. Hisfourteen canoes laden with furs were an earnest of the riches of thewonderful West and so pleased his Montreal partners that again theyfitted him out with adequate supplies. In the summer of 1738 we find himat Fort La Reine, rich for the moment in goods with which to trade, keenand competent as a trader, and having great influence with the natives. All through the West he found Indians who went to trade with the Englishon Hudson Bay, and he constantly urged them not to take the long journeybut to depend upon the French who came into their own country. It was apolicy well fitted to cause searching of heart among the English traderswho seemed so secure in their snug quarters on the seashore waiting forthe Indians to come to them. 

La Verendrye had now a fresh plan for penetrating farther on hisalluring quest. He had heard of a river to the south to be reached by ajourney overland. It was a new thing for him to abandon canoes and marchon foot but this he now did and with winter approaching. On October 16, 1738, when the autumn winds were already chill, there was a strikinglittle parade at Fort La Reine. The drummer beat the garrison to arms. What with soldiers brought from Canada, the voyageurs who had paddledthe great canoes, and the Indians who dogged always the steps of theFrench traders, there was a muster at the fort of some scores of men. La Verendrye reviewed the whole company and from them chose for hisexpedition twenty soldiers and voyageurs and about twenty AssiniboineIndians. As companions for himself he took Francois and Pierre, two ofhis three surviving sons, and two traders who were at the fort. 

We can picture the little company setting out on the 18th of Octoberon foot, with some semblance of military order, by a well-beaten trailleading across the high land which separates the Red River country fromthe regions to the southwest. La Verendrye had heard much of a people, the Mandans, dwelling in well-ordered villages on the banks of a greatriver and cultivating the soil instead of living the wandering lifeof hunters. Such wonders of Mandan culture had been reported toLa Verendrye that he half expected to find them white men with acivilization equal to that of Europe. The river was in reality not anunknown stream, as La Verendrye hoped, but the Missouri, a river alreadyfrequented by the French in its lower stretches where its waters jointhose of the Mississippi. 

It was a long march over the prairie. La Verendrye found that he couldnot hurry his Indian guides. They insisted on delays during days ofglorious autumn weather when it would have been wise to press on andavoid the winter cold on the wind-swept prairie. They went out of theirway to visit a village of their own Assiniboine tribe; and, when theyresumed their journey, this whole village followed them. The prairieIndians had a more developed sense of order and discipline than thetribes of the forest. La Verendrye admired the military regularity ofthe savages on the march. They divided the company of more than sixhundred into three columns: in front, scouts to look out for an enemyand also for herds of buffalo; in the center, well protected, the oldand the lame, all those incapable of fighting; and, for a rear-guard, strong fighting men. When buffalo were seen, the most active of thefighters rushed to the front to aid in hemming in the game. Women anddogs carried the baggage, the men condescending to bear only theirweapons. 

Not until cold December had come did the party reach the chief Mandanvillage. It was in some sense imposing, for the Indian lodges werearranged neatly in streets and squares and the surrounding palisade wasstrong and well built. Around the fort was a ditch fifteen feet deep andof equal width, which made the village impregnable in Indian warfare. After saluting the village with three volleys of musket fire, LaVerendrye marched in with great ceremony, under the French flag, only todiscover that the Mandans were not greatly unlike the Assiniboines andother Indians of the West whom he already knew. The men went about nakedand the women nearly so. They were skilled in dressing leather. Theywere also cunning traders, for they duped La Verendrye's friends, the Assiniboines, and cheated them out of their muskets, ammunition, kettles, and knives. Great eaters were the Mandans. They cultivatedabundant crops and stored them in cave cellars. Every day they broughttheir visitors more than twenty dishes cooked in earthen pottery oftheir own handicraft. There was incredible feasting, which La Verendryeavoided but which his sons enjoyed. The Mandan language he could notunderstand and close questioning as to the route to the Western Sea wasthus impossible. He learned enough to discredit the vague tales of whitemen in armor and peopled towns with which his lying guides had regaledhim. In the end he decided for the time being to return to Fort La Reineand to leave two of his followers to learn the Mandan language so thatin the future they might act as interpreters. When he left the Mandanvillage on the 13th of December, he was already ill and it is a wonderthat he did not perish from the cold on the winter journey across hilland prairie. "In all my life I have never, " he says, "endured suchmisery from illness and fatigue, as on that journey. " On the 11th ofFebruary he was back at Fort La Reine, worn out and broken in health butstill undaunted and resolved never to abandon his search. 

Abandon it he never did. We find him in Montreal in 1740 involved inwhat he had always held in horror--a lawsuit brought against him bysome impatient creditor. The report had gone abroad that he was amassinggreat wealth, when, as he said, all that he had accumulated was a debtof forty thousand livres. In the autumn of 1741 he was back at Fort LaReine, where he welcomed his son Pierre from a fruitless journey to theMandans. 

The most famous of all the efforts of the family was now on foot. OnApril 29, 1742, a new expedition started from Fort La Reine, led by LaVerendrye's two sons, Pierre and Francois. They knew the nature of thetask before them, its perils as well as its hopes. They took with themno imposing company as their father had done, but only two men. Theparty of four, too feeble to fight their way, had to trust to thepeaceful disposition of the natives. When they started, the prairie wasturning from brown to green and the rivers were still swollen from thespring thaw. In three weeks they reached a Mandan village on the upperMissouri and were well received. It was after midsummer when they setout again and pressed on westward with a trend to the south. The countrywas bare and desolate. For twenty days they saw no human being. They hadMandan guides who promised to take them to the next tribe, the HandsomeMen--Beaux Hommes--as the brothers called them, a tribe much fearedby the Mandans. The travelers were now mounted; for the horse, broughtfirst to America by the Spaniards, had run wild on the western plainswhere the European himself had not yet penetrated, and had become anindispensable aid to certain of the native tribes. Deer and buffalo werein abundance and they had no lack of food. 

When they reached the tribe of Beaux Hommes, the Mandan guides fledhomeward. Summer passed into bleak autumn with chill winds and longnights. By the end of October they were among the Horse Indians who, they had been told, could guide them to the sea. These, however, nowsaid that only the Bow Indians, farther on, could do this. Winter wasnear when they were among these Indians, probably a tribe of the Sioux, whom they found excitedly preparing for a raid on their neighborsfarther west, the Snakes. They were going, they said, towards themountains and there the Frenchmen could look out on the great sea. Sothe story goes on. The brothers advanced ever westward and the landbecame more rugged, for they were now climbing upward from the prairiecountry. At last, on January 1, 1743, they saw what both cheered anddiscouraged them. In the distance were mountains. About them was theprairie, with game in abundance. It was a great host with which thebrothers traveled for there were two thousand warriors with theirfamilies who made night vocal with songs and yells. On the 12th ofJanuary, nearly two weeks later, with an advance party of warriors, the La Verendryes reached the foot of the mountains, "well wooded withtimber of every kind and very high. "

Was it the Rocky Mountains which they saw? Had they reached that lastmighty barrier of snow-capped peaks, rugged valleys, and torrentialstreams, beyond which lay the sea? That they had done so was longassumed and many conjectures have been offered as to the point in theRockies near which they made their last camp. Their further progress waschecked by an unexpected crisis. One day they came upon an encampment ofthe dreaded Snake Indians which had been abandoned in great haste. This, the Bow Indians thought, could only mean that the Snakes had hurriedlyleft their camp in order to slip in behind the advance guard of the Bowsand massacre the women and children left in the rear. Panic seized theBows and they turned homeward in wild confusion. Their chief couldnot restrain them. "I was very much disappointed, " writes one of thebrothers, "that I could not climb the mountains"--those mountains fromwhich he had been told that he might view the Western Sea. 

There was nothing for it but to turn back through snowdrifts over thebleak prairie. The progress was slow for the snow was sometimes two feetdeep. On the 1st of March the brothers parted with their Bow friends attheir village and then headed for home. By the 20th they were encampedwith a friendly tribe on the banks of the Missouri. Here, to assertthat Louis XV was lord of all that country, they built on an eminencea pyramid of stones and in it they buried a tablet of lead with aninscription which recorded the name of Louis XV, their King, and of theMarquis de Beauharnois, Governor of Canada, and the date of the visit. 

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. One hundred and seventy yearslater, on February 16, 1913, a schoolgirl strolling with some companionson a Sunday afternoon near the High School in the town of Pierre, SouthDakota, stumbled upon a projecting corner of this tablet, which wasin an excellent state of preservation. Thus we know exactly where thebrothers La Verendrye were on April 2, 1743, when they bade farewell totheir Indian friends and set out on horseback for Fort La Reine. 

Spring had turned to summer before the brothers reached theirdestination. On July 2, 1743, they relieved the anxiety of their waitingfather after an absence of fifteen months. Moving slowly as they did, could they have traveled from the distant Rockies from the time inJanuary when they turned back? It seems doubtful; and in spite of thelong-cherished belief that the brothers reached the foothills of theRocky Mountains, it may be that they had not penetrated beyond thebarrier which we know as the Black Hills. The chance discovery of aforgotten plate by school children may in truth prove that, as late asin 1750, the Rocky Mountains had not yet been seen by white men and thatthe first vision of that mighty range was obtained much farther north inCanada. 

After 1743 the French seem to have made no further efforts to reach theWestern Sea by way of the Missouri. If in reality the brothers had notgone beyond the Black Hills in South Dakota, then their most importantwork appears to have been done within what is now Canada, as discoverersof the Saskatchewan, the mighty river which carries to far-distantHudson Bay the waters melted on the eastern slopes of the RockyMountains. It was by this route up the Saskatchewan that fifty yearslater was solved the tough and haunting problem of going overthe mountains to the Pacific Ocean. La Verendrye now ascended theSaskatchewan for some three hundred miles to the forks where it dividesinto two great branches. He was going deeper into debt but he hopedalways for help from the King. It is pathetic to see today, on the mapof that part of western Canada which he and his sons explored, a town, alake, and a county called Dauphin, in honor of the heir to the throneof France. No doubt La Verendrye had the thought that some day he mightplead with the Dauphin when he had become King for help in his greattask. 

Before the year 1749 had ended La Verendrye, who had returned toMontreal, was in his grave. His sons, partners in his work, expected tobe charged with the task--to which the King, in 1749, had anew appointedtheir father--of continuing the work of discovery in the West. Francois, for a time ill, wrote in 1750 from Montreal to La Jonquiere, theGovernor at Quebec, that he hoped to take up the plans of his father. The Governor's reply was that he had appointed another officer, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to lead in the search for the Western Sea. Francois hurried to Quebec. The Governor met him with a bland face andseemed friendly. Francois, urged that he and his brothers claimedno preeminence and that they were ready to serve under the orders ofSaint-Pierre. The Governor was hesitant; but at last told Francois, frankly that the new leader desired no help either from him or fromhis brothers. Francois, was dismayed. He and his brothers were in debt. Already he had sent on stores and men to the West and the men werelikely to starve if not followed by provisions. His chief property wasin the West in the form of goods which would be plundered without hisguardianship. To tide over the immediate future he sold the one smallpiece of land in Montreal which he had inherited from his father andthrew this slight sop to his urgent creditors. 

Saint-Pierre, strong in his right of monopoly, insisted that thebrothers should not even return to the West. Francois, urged that to gowas a matter of life and death. In some way he secured leave to set outwith one laden canoe. When Saint-Pierre found that Francois had gone, heclaimed damages for the intrusion on his monopoly and secured an orderto pursue Francois and bring him back. He caught him at Michilimackinac. The meeting between the two men at that place involved explanations. Face to face with an injured man, Saint-Pierre admitted that he had beenin the wrong, paid to Francois many compliments, and regretted that hehad not joined hands with the brothers. 

The mischief done was, however, irreparable. Francois, crippled byopposition, could not carry on his trade with success and in the end hereturned to Montreal a ruined man overwhelmed with debt. He wrote to theFrench court a noble appeal for relief:

"I remain without friends and without patrimony... A simple ensign ofthe second grade; my elder brother has only the same rank as myself; myyounger brother is only a junior cadet. This is the result of all thatmy father, my brothers and myself have done.... There are in the handsof your Lordship resources of compensation and of consolation. I ventureto appeal to you for relief. To find ourselves excluded from theWest would mean to be cruelly robbed of our heritage, to realize forourselves all that is bitter and to see others secure all that issweet. "

The appeal fell on deaf ears. The brothers sank into obscurity. DuringMontcalm's campaigns from 1756 to 1759 Pierre and Francois seem to havebeen engaged in military service. Francois was killed in the siege ofQuebec in 1759. After the final surrender of Canada the Auguste, a shipladen for the most part with refugees returning to France, was wreckedon the St. Lawrence. Among those on board who perished was Pierre dela Verendrye. He died amid the howling of the tempest and the cries ofdrowning men. Tragedy, unrelenting, had pursued him to the end. 

Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the choice of the Marquis de la Jonquiereto take up the search for the Western Sea in succession to the elderLa Verendrye, himself went only as far as Fort La Reine. It was asubordinate, the Chevalier de Niverville, whom he sent farther west tofind the great mountains and if possible the sea. The winter of 1750-51had set in before Niverville was ready. He started apparently from FortMaurepas, on snowshoes, his party dragging their supplies on toboggans. Before they reached Paskoya on the Saskatchewan (the modern Le Pas) theyhad nearly perished of hunger and were able to save their lives only bycatching a few fish through the ice. Niverville was ill. He sent forwardten men by canoe up the Saskatchewan. They traveled with such rapiditythat on May 29, 1751, they had reached the Rockies. They built agood fort, which they named Fort La Jonquiere, and stored it with aconsiderable quantity of provisions. If, as seems likely, the brothersLa Verendrye saw only the Black Hills, these ten unknown men were thediscoverers of the Rocky Mountains. 

Saint-Pierre braced himself to set out for the distant goal but he waseasily discouraged. Niverville, he said, was ill; the Indians were atwar among themselves; some of them were plotting what Saint-Pierre calls"treason" to the French and their "perfidy" surpassed anything in hislifelong experience. The hostile influence of the English he thoughtall-pervasive. Obviously these are excuses. He did not like the taskand he turned back. As it was, he tells a dramatic story of how Indianscrowded into Fort La Reine in a threatening manner and how he saved thefort and himself only by rushing to the magazine with a lighted torch, knocking open a barrel of powder, and threatening to blow up everythingand everybody if the savages did not withdraw at once. He was eager toleave the country. In 1752 he handed over the command to St. Luc de laCome and, in August of that year, having experienced "much wretchedness"on his journeys, he was safely back in Montreal. The founding of FortLa Jonquiere was, no doubt, a great feat. Where the fort stood we do notknow. It may have been on the North Saskatchewan, near Edmonton, oron the south branch of the river near Calgary. In any case it was afar-flung outpost of France. 

The English had always been more prosaic than the French. The traders onHudson Bay worked, indeed, under a monopoly not less rigorous than thatwhich Canada imposed. Without doubt, many an Englishman on the Baywas haunted by the hope and desire to reach the Western Sea. But theservants of the Company knew that to buy and sell at a profit was theirchief aim. They had been on the whole content to wait for trade to cometo them. By 1740 the Indians, who made the long journey to the Bayby the intricate waters which carried to the sea the flood of theSaskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg, were showing to the English articlessupplied by the French at points far inland. It thus became evident thatthe French were tapping the traffic in furs near its source and cuttingoff the stream which had long flowed to Hudson Bay. 

In June, 1754, Anthony Hendry, a young man in the service of theCompany, left York factory on Hudson Bay to find out what the Frenchwere doing. We have a slight but carefully written diary of Hendry'sjourney. He does not fail to note that in the summer weather lifewas made almost intolerable by the "musketoos. " Traveling by canoe hereached the Saskatchewan River and tells how, on the 22d of July, hecame to "a French house. " It was Fort Paskoya. When Hendry paddled upto the river bank two Frenchmen met him and "in a very genteel manner"invited him into their house. With all courtesy they asked him, he says, if he had any letter from his master and where and on what design he wasgoing inland. His answer was that he had been sent "to view theCountry" and that he intended to return to Hudson Bay in the spring. The Frenchmen were sorry that their own master, who was apparentlythe well-known Canadian leader, St. Luc de la Corne, the successor ofSaint-Pierre, had gone to Montreal with furs, and added their regretsthat they must detain Hendry until this leader's return. At thisHendry's Indians grunted and said that the French dared not do so. Nextday Hendry took breakfast and dinner at the fort, gave "two feet oftobacco" (at that time it was sold in long coils) to his hosts, and inreturn received some moose flesh. The confidence of his Indian guidesthat the French would not dare to detain him was justified. Next dayHendry paddled on up the river and advanced more than twenty miles, camping at night by "the largest Birch trees I have yet seen. "

Hendry wished to see the country thoroughly and to come into touch withthe natives. The best way to do this and to obtain food was to leave theriver and go boldly overland. He accordingly left his canoes behind andadvanced on foot. The party was starving. On a Sunday in July he walkedtwenty-six miles and says "neither Bird nor Beast to be seen, --so thatwe have nothing to eat. " The next day he traveled twenty-four mileson an empty stomach and then, to his delight, found a supply of ripestrawberries, "the size of black currants and the finest I ever eat. "The next day his Indians killed two moose. He then met natives who, when he asked them to go to Hudson Bay to trade, replied that they couldobtain all they needed from the French posts. The tact and skill of theFrench were such that, as Hendry admits, reluctantly enough, the Indianswere already strongly attached to them. Day after day Hendry journeyedon over the rolling prairie in the warm summer days. He came to thesouth branch of the Saskatchewan near the point where now stands thecity of Saskatoon and crossed the river on the 21st of August. Then onto the West, eager to take part in the hunting of the buffalo. 

Hendry is almost certainly the first Englishman to see this region. Inthe end he reached the mountains. He makes no mention of having seen orheard anything of Fort La Jonquiere, built three years earlier. He hadaims different from those of La Verendrye and other French explorers. Not the Western Sea but openings for trade was he seeking. His greataim was to reach the tribe called later the Blackfeet Indians, who weremighty hunters of the buffalo. Hendry was alive to the impressions ofnature. The intense heat of August was followed in September by gloriousweather, with the nights cool and the mosquitoes no longer troublesome. The climate was bracing. He complains only, from time to time, ofswollen feet, and we need not wonder since his daily march occasionallywent beyond twenty-five miles. Sometimes for days he saw no livingcreature. At other times wild life was prolific: there were moose ingreat abundance, bears, including the dreaded grizzly--one of whichkilled an Indian of his company and badly mutilated another--beaver, wild horses, and, above all, the buffalo. "Saw many herds of Buffalograzing like English cattle, " he says, on the 13th of September, and thenext day he goes buffalo hunting. Guns and ammunition were costly. HisIndians, who used only bows and arrows, on this day killed seven--"finesport, " says Hendry. Often the Indians took only the tongue, leavingthe carcass for the wolves, who naturally abounded in such advantageousconditions. It is not easy now to imagine the part played by the buffaloin the life of the prairie. As Hendry advanced the herds were so denseas sometimes to retard his progress. Other writers tell of the vastnumbers of these creatures. Alexander Henry, the younger, writing onApril 1, 1801, says that in a river swollen by spring floods, drownedbuffalo floated past his camp in one continuous line for two daysand two nights. In prairie fires thousands were blinded and would gotumbling down banks into streams or lie down to die. One morning thebellowing of buffaloes awakened Henry and he looked out to see theprairie black. "The ground was covered at every point of the compass, asfar as the eye could reach, and every animal was in motion. "

Daily as Hendry advanced he saw smoke in the distance and his Indianstold him that it came from the camp of the Blackfeet. He reached themon Monday the 14th of October. When four miles away he was stopped bymounted scouts who asked whether he came as a friend or as an enemy. Hewas taken to the camp of two hundred tents pitched in two rows, and wasled through the long passage between the tents to the big tent of thechief of whom he had heard much. Not a word was spoken. The chief saton a white buffalo skin. Pipes were passed round and each person waspresented with boiled buffalo flesh. When talk began, Hendry told thechief that his great leader had sent him to invite them to come to tradeat Hudson Bay where his people would get powder, shot, guns, cloth, beads, and other things. The chief said it was faraway, and his peopleknew nothing of paddling. Such strangers to great waters were they thatthey would not even eat fish. They despised Hendry's tobacco. What theysmoked was dried horse dung. In the end Hendry was dismissed and orderedto make his camp a quarter of a mile away from that of the Blackfeet. 

It was close by the present site of Calgary and apparently in full view, on clear days, of the white peaks of the Rocky Mountains that Hendryvisited the Blackfeet. He lingered in the far western country throughthe greater part of the winter. On a portion of his return journey heused a horse. When the spring thaw came, once more he took to the waterin canoes. He complains of the idleness of his Indian companions whowould remain in their huts all day and never stir to lay up a storeof food even when game was abundant. Conjuring, dancing to the hideouspounding of drums, feasting and smoking, were their amusements. Onhis way back Hendry revisited the French post on the Saskatchewan. Theleader, no doubt St. Luc de la Corne, had returned from Montreal and nowhad with him nine men. "The master, " says Hendry, "invited me in tosup with him, and was very kind. He is dressed very Genteel. " He showedHendry his stock of furs; "a brave parcel, " the admiring rival thought. Hendry admits the superiority of the French as traders. They "talkSeveral Languages to perfection; they have the advantage of us inevery shape. " In the West, as in the East, France was recognized as aformidable rival of England for the mastery of North America. 

When Hendry was making his peaceful visit to the French fort in 1755, the crisis of the struggle had just been reached. In that year thebattle line from Acadia to the Ohio and the Mississippi was alreadyforming, and the fate of France's eager efforts to hold the West wassoon to be decided in the East. If Britain should conquer on theSt. Lawrence, she would conquer also on the Saskatchewan and on theMississippi. 

Conquer she did, and thus it happened that it was Britain's sons whotook up the later burdens of the discoverer. In the summer of 1789, justat the time when the great Revolution was beginning in France, AlexanderMackenzie, a Scotch trader from Montreal, starting from Lake Athabasca, north of the farthest point reached by Hendry, was pressing still onwardinto an unknown region to find a river which might lead to the sea. Thisriver he found; we know it now as the Mackenzie. For two weeks he andhis Indians and voyageurs paddled with the current down this mightystream, and on July 14, 1789, the day of the fall of the Bastille, hesaw whales sporting in Arctic waters. 

The real goal which Mackenzie sought was that of La Verendrye, awestern and not a northern ocean. Three years later, after months ofpreparation, he attempted the great feat of crossing the Rocky Mountainsto the sea. After nine months of rugged travel, across mountain streamsand gorges, in peril daily from hostile savages, on July 22, 1793, hereached the shore of the Pacific Ocean, the first white man to go byland over the width of the continent from sea to sea. It was thus aScotchman who achieved that of which La Verendrye had so long dreamed;and with no aid from the state but with only the resources of a tradingcompany. 

Ten years later, when France sold to the United States her lastremaining territory of Louisiana, the American Government equipped anexpedition under Lewis and Clark to cross the Rocky Mountains by way ofthe Missouri, the route from which the La Verendrye brothers had beenobliged to turn back. The party began the ascent of the Missouri on May14, 1804, and arrived in the Mandan country in the late autumn. Herethey spent the winter of 1804-05. Not until November 15, 1805, had theycompleted the hard journey across the Rocky Mountains and reachedthe mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean. Little didLa Verendrye, in his eager search for the Western Sea, imagine thedifficulties to be encountered and the hardships to be endured by thosewho were destined, in later days, to realize his dream. 

CHAPTER VI. The Valley Of The Ohio

Almost at the moment in 1749 when British ships were lying at anchor inHalifax harbor and sending to shore hundreds of boatloads of dazed andexpectant settlers for the new colony, there had set out from Montreal, in the interests of France, an expedition with designs so far-reachingthat we wonder still at the stupendous issues involved in efforts whichseem so petty. The purpose of France was now to make good her claimto the whole vast West. It was a picturesque company which pushed itscanoes from the shore at Lachine on the 15th of June, six days beforethe British squadron reached Halifax. There was a procession oftwenty-three great birchbark canoes well filled, for in them were morethan two hundred men, at least ten in each canoe, together with thenecessary impedimenta for a long journey. There were twenty soldiersin uniform, a hundred and eighty Canadians skilled in paddling and incarrying canoes and freight over the portages, a band of Indians, andfourteen officers with Celoron de Blainville at their head. 

The acting Governor of Canada at this time was a dwarf in physique, buta giant in intellect, the brilliant naval officer, the Marquis dela Galissoniere, destined later to inflict upon the English in theMediterranean the naval defeat which caused the execution of AdmiralByng as a coward. This remarkable man--planning, like his predecessorFrontenac, on a scale suited to world politics--saw that the peace of1748 settled nothing, that in the balance now was the whole future ofNorth America, and that victory would be to the alert and the strong. He chose Celoron, the most capable of the hardy young Canadian noblessewhom he had at hand, a man accustomed to the life of the forest, andsent with him this large party to assert against the English the rightof France to the valley of the Ohio. The English were now to be shut outdefinitely from advancing westward and to be confined to the strip ofterritory lying between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany Mountains, a little more than that strip fifty miles wide talked about in Quebec asthe maximum concession of France, but still not very much according tothe ideas of the English, and even this not secure if France should evergrow strong enough to crowd them out. 

At no time do we find more vivid the contrast in type between the twonations. Before a concrete fact the British take action. When they gaveup Louisbourg they built Halifax. Their traders had pressed into theOhio country, not directed under any grandiose idea of empire, butsimply as individuals, to trade and reap for themselves what profit theycould. When they were checked and menaced by the French, they saw thatsomething must be done. How they did it we shall see presently. It wasthe weakness of the English colonies that they could not unite towork out a great plan. If Virginia took steps to advance westward, Pennsylvania was jealous lest lands which she desired should go to arival colony. France, on the other hand, had complete unity of design. Celoron spoke in the name of the King of France and he spoke in termsuncompromising enough. "The Ohio, " said the King of France through hisagent, "belongs to me. " It is a French river. The lands bordering uponit are "my lands. " The English intruders are foreign robbers and notone of them is to be left in the western country: "I wilt not endurethe English on my land. " The Indians, dwelling in that region, are "mychildren. "

Scattered over the vast region about the Great Lakes were a good manyFrench. At the lower end of Lake Ontario stood Fort Frontenac, a menaceto the colony of New York, as the dwellers in the British post of Oswegoon the opposite shore of the lake well knew. We have already seen thatthe French held a fort at Niagara guarding the route leading fartherwest to Lake Erie and to regions beyond Lake Erie, by way of the Ohio orthe upper lakes, to the Mississippi. Near the mouth of the Mississippi, New Orleans was now becoming a considerable town with a governorindependent of the governor at Quebec. Along the Mississippi atstrategic points stretching northward beyond the mouth of the Missouriwere a few French settlements, ragged enough and with a shiftlesspopulation of fur traders and farmers, but adequate to assert France'spossession of that mighty highway. The weak point in France's positionwas in her connection of the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence by wayof the Ohio. This was the place of danger, for here English rivalry wasstrongest, and it was to cure this weakness that Celoron was now sentforth. 

Celoron moved toilsomely over the portage which led past the greatcataract of Niagara and launched his canoes on Lake Erie. From itssouth shore, during seven days of heart-breaking labor, the partydragged the canoes and supplies through dense forest and over steephills until they reached Chautauqua Lake, the waters of which flow intothe Allegheny River and by it to the Ohio. For many weary days theywent with the current, stopping at Indian villages, treating with thesavages, who were sometimes awed and sometimes menacing. They warnedthe Indians to have no dealings with the scheming English who would"infallibly prove to be robbers, " and asserted as boldly as Celorondared the lordship of the King of France and his love for his forestchildren. Celoron realized that he was on an historic mission. Atseveral points on the Ohio, with great ceremony, he buried leadenplates, as La Verendrye had done a few years earlier in the far West, bearing an inscription declaring that, in the name of the King ofFrance, he took possession of the country. On trees over these memorialsof lead he nailed the arms of France, stamped on sheets of tin. Sincethat day at least three of the plates have been found. 

Celoron's expedition went well enough. He advanced as far west on theOhio as the mouth of the Great Miami River, then up that river, and bydifficult portages back to Lake Erie. It was a remarkable journey; butin the late autumn he was back again in Montreal, not sure that he hadachieved much. The natives of the country were, he thought, hostile toFrance and devoted to the English who had long traded with them. Thisopinion was in truth erroneous, for, when the time of testing came, the Indians of the West fought on the side of France. Montcalm had manyhundreds of them under his banner. The expedition meant the definite andfinal throwing down of the gauntlet by France. With all due ceremonyshe had declared that the Ohio country was hers and that there she wouldallow no English to dwell. 

Legardeur de Saint-Pierre could hardly have known, when he left the hardregion of the Saskatchewan in 1752, that a year later he would be sentto protect another set of outposts of France in the West. In 1753 wefind him in command of the French forces in the Ohio country. Celoronhad been sent to Detroit. If Saint-Pierre had played his part feebly onthe Saskatchewan, he was now made for a brief period one of the centralfigures in the opening act of a world drama. It is with a touch ofemotion that we see on the stage, as the opponent of this not greatFrenchman, the momentous figure of George Washington. 

The fight for North America was now rapidly approaching its final phasein the struggle which we know as the Seven Years' War. During fortyyears, commissioners of the two nations had been trying to reach someagreement as to boundaries. Each side, however, made impossible demands. France claimed all the lands drained by the St. Lawrence and the GreatLakes and by the Mississippi and its tributaries a claim which, if madegood, would have carried her into the very heart of the colony of NewYork and would have given her also the mastery of the Ohio and theregions beyond. Britain claimed all the lands ever occupied by theIroquois Indians, who had been recognized as British subjects by theTreaty of Utrecht. As those Indians had overrun regions north of theSt. Lawrence, the British thus would become masters of a good part ofCanada. Neither side was prepared for reasonable compromise. The swordwas to be the final arbiter. 

Events moved rapidly towards war. In 1753 Duquesne, the new Governor ofCanada, sent more than a thousand men to build Fort Le Boeuf, on upperwaters flowing to the Ohio and within easy reach of support by way ofLake Erie. In the nest year the French were swarming in the Ohio Valley, stirring up the Indians against the English and confident of success. They jeered at the divisions among the English and believed their ownunity so strong that they could master the colonies one by one. The twocolonies most affected were Pennsylvania and Virginia, either of themquite ready to see its own citizens advance into the Ohio country andpossess the land, but neither of them willing to unite with the other ineffective military action to protect the frontier. 

It is at this crisis that there appears for the first time in historyGeorge Washington of Virginia. In December, 1753, in the dead of winter, he made a long, toilsome journey from Virginia to the north throughsnow and rain, by difficult forest trails, over two ranges of mountains, across streams sometimes frozen, sometimes dangerous from treacherousthaws. On the way he heard gossip from the Indians about the designs ofthe French. They boasted that they would come in numbers like the sandsof the seashore; that the natives would be no more an obstacle to themthan the flies and mosquitoes, which indeed they resembled; and that notthe breadth of a finger-nail of land belonged to the Indians. Washingtonwas told by one of the French that "it was their absolute design to takepossession of the Ohio and, by--, they would do it!" It was no matterthat the French were outnumbered two to one by the English, for theEnglish were dilatory and ineffective. 

In the end, Washington arrived at Fort Le Boeuf and presented a letterfrom Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, pointing out thatthe British could not permit an armed force from Canada to invade theirterritory of the Ohio and requiring that the French should leave thecountry at once. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to whom this firm demand wasdelivered, "an elderly gentleman, " says Washington, with "much the airof a soldier" gave, of course, a polite answer in the manner of hisnation, but he intended, he said, to remain where he was as long ashe had instructions so to do. Washington kept his eyes open and madecareful observations of the plan of the fort, the number of men, andalso of the canoes, of which he noted that there were more than twohundred ready and many others building. The French tried to entice awayhis Indians and he says, "I cannot say that ever in my life I sufferedso much anxiety. " On the journey back he nearly perished when he fellinto an ice-cold stream and was obliged to spend the night on a tinyisland in frozen clothing. He brought comfort as cold to the waitingDinwiddie. 

The French meanwhile were always a little ahead of the English in theirplanning. Early in April, 1754, a French force of five or six hundredmen from Canada, which had set out while Quebec was still in the icygrip of winter, reached the upper waters of the Ohio. They attackedand destroyed a fort which the English had begun at the forks where nowstands Pittsburgh, and, in its place, began a formidable one, calledFort Duquesne after the Governor of Canada. In vain was Washington sentwith a few hundred men to take possession of this fort and to assertthe claim of the English to the land. He fell in with a French scoutingparty under young Coulon de Jumonville, killed its leader and nineothers, and took more than a score of prisoners--warfare bloody enoughin a time of supposed peace. But the French were now on the Ohio ingreater numbers than the English. At a spot known as the Great Meadows, where Washington had hastily thrown up defenses, which he called FortNecessity, he was forced to surrender, but was allowed to lead hisforce back to Virginia, defeated in the first military adventure of hiscareer. The French took the view that his killing of the young officerJumonville was assassination, since no state of war existed, and raiseda fierce clamor that Washington was a murderer--a strange contrast tohis relations with France in the years to come. 

What astonishes us in regard to these events is that Britain and Francelong remained nominally at peace while they were carrying on activehostilities in America and sending from Europe armies to fight. Therewere various reasons for this hesitation about plunging formally intowar. Each side wished to delay until sure of its alliances in Europe. During the war ending in 1748 France had fought with Frederick ofPrussia against Austria, and Britain had been Austria's ally. The warhad been chiefly a land war, but France had been beaten on the sea. NowBritain and Prussia were drawing together and, if France fought them, it must be with Austria as an ally. Such an alliance offered Francebut slight advantage. Austria, an inland power, could not help Franceagainst an adversary whose strength was on the sea; she could not aidthe designs of France in America or in India, where the capable Frenchleader Dupleix was in a fair way to build up a mighty oriental empire. Nor had France anything to gain in Europe from an Austrian alliance. The shoe was on the other foot. The supreme passion of Maria Theresawho ruled Austria was to recover the province of Silesia which had beenseized in 1740 by Prussia and held--held to this day. Austria coulddo little for France but France could do much for Austria. So Austriaworked for this alliance. It is a story of intrigue. Usually in Francethe King carried on negotiations with foreign countries only throughhis ministers, who knew the real interests of France. Now the astuteAustrian statesman, Kaunitz, went past the ministers of Louis XV toLouis himself. This was the heyday of Madame de Pompadour, the King'smistress. Maria Theresa condescended to intrigue with this woman whom inher heart she despised. There is still much mystery in the affair. TheKing was flattered into thinking that personally he was swaying theaffairs of Europe and took delight in deceiving his ministers andworking behind their backs. While events in America were making warbetween France and Britain inevitable, France was being tied to an allywho could give her little aid. She must spend herself to fight Austria'sbattles on the land, while her real interests required that she shouldbuild up her fleet to fight on the sea the great adversary across theEnglish Channel. 

The destiny of North America might, indeed; well have been other thanit is. A France strong on the sea, able to bring across to America greatforces, might have held, at any rate, her place on the St. Lawrenceand occupied the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. We can hardlydoubt that the English colonies, united by a common deadly peril, couldhave held against France most of the Atlantic coast. But she might wellhave divided with them North America; and today the lands north of theOhio and westward beyond the Ohio to the Pacific Ocean might have beenFrench. The two nations on the brink of war in 1754 were playing formighty stakes; and victory was to the power which had control of thesea. France had a great army, Britain a great fleet. In this contrastlay wrapped the secret of the future of North America. 

As the crisis drew near the vital thought about the future of Americawas found, not in America, but in Europe. The English colonies were soaccustomed to distrust each other that, when Virginia grew excited aboutFrench designs on the Ohio, Pennsylvania or North Carolina was as likelyas not to say that it was the French who were in the right and a stupid, or excitable, or conceited, colonial governor who was in the wrong. In Paris and London, on the other hand, there were no illusions aboutaffairs in America. In both capitals it was realized that a grim fightwas on. During the winter of 1754-55 extensive preparations were beingmade on both sides. France equipped an army under Baron Dieskau to go toCanada; Britain equipped one under General Braddock to go to Virginia. Each nation asked the other why it was sending troops to America andeach gave the assurance of benevolent designs. But in the spring of 1755a British fleet under Admiral Boscawen put to sea with instructions tocapture any French vessels bound for North America. At the same time thetwo armies were on the way across the Atlantic. Dieskau went to Canada, Braddock to Virginia, each instructed to attack the other side, whilein the meantime ambassadors at the two courts gave bland assurances thattheir only thought was to preserve peace. 

The English colonists showed a political blindness that amounted toimbecility. Albany was the central point from which the dangers on allsides might best be surveyed. Here came together in the summer of 1754delegates from seven of the colonies to consider the common peril. TheFrench were busy in winning, as they did, the support of the many Indiantribes of the West; and the old allies of the English, the Iroquois, were nervous for their own safety. The delegates to Albany, tied andbound by instructions from their Assemblies, had to listen to plainwords from the savages. The one Englishman who, in dealing with theIndians, had tact and skill equal to that of Frontenac of old, wasan Irishman, Sir William Johnson. To him the Iroquois made indignantprotests that the English were as ready as the French to rob them oftheir lands. If we find a bear in a tree, they said, some one willspring up to claim that the tree belongs to him and keep us fromshooting the bear. The French, they added, are at least men who areprepared to fight; you weak and un-prepared English are like womenand any day the French may turn you out. Benjamin Franklin told thedelegates that they must unite to meet a common enemy. Unite, however, they would not. No one of them would surrender to a central bodyany authority through which the power of the King over them might beincreased. The Congress--the word is full of omen for the future--failedto bring about the much-needed union. 

In February, 1755, Braddock arrived in Virginia with his army, and earlyin May he was on his march across the mountains with regulars, militia, and Indians, to the number of nearly fifteen hundred men, to attack FortDuquesne and to rid the Ohio Valley of the French. He knew little offorest warfare with its use of Indian scouts, its ambushes, its fightingfrom the cover of trees. On the 9th of July, on the Monongahela River, near Fort Duquesne, in a struggle in the forest against French andIndians he was defeated and killed. George Washington was in the fightand had to report to Dinwiddie the dismal record of what had happened. The frontier was aflame; and nearly all the Indians of the West, seeingthe rising star, went over to the French. The power of France was, forthe time, supreme in the heart of the continent. At that moment evenfar away in the lone land about the Saskatchewan, the English trader, Hendry, had to admit that the French knew better than the English how toattract the support of the savage tribes. 

Meanwhile Dieskau had arrived at Quebec. In the colony of New YorkSir William Johnson, the rough and cheery Irishman, much loved of theIroquois, was gathering forces to attack Canada. Early in July, 1755, Johnson had more than three thousand provincial troops at Albany, a motley horde of embattled farmers, most of them with no uniforms, dressed in their own homespun, carrying their own muskets, electingtheir own officers, and altogether, from the strict soldier's point ofview, a rabble rather than an army. To meet this force and destroy itif he could, Dieskau took to the French fort at Crown Point, on LakeChamplain, and southward from there to Ticonderoga at the head ofthis lake, some three thousand five hundred men, including his Frenchregulars, some Canadians and Indians. Johnson's force lay at FortGeorge, later Fort William Henry, the most southerly point on LakeGeorge. The names, given by Johnson himself, show how the dullHanoverian kings and their offspring were held in honor by the Irishdiplomat who was looking for favors at court. The two armies met on theshores of Lake George early in September and there was an all-day fight. Each side lost some two hundred men. Among those who perished on theFrench side was Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had escaped all theperils of the western wilderness to meet his fate in this borderstruggle. The honors of the day seem to have been with Johnson, for theFrench were driven off and Dieskau himself, badly wounded, was takenprisoner. That Johnson had great difficulty in keeping his savages fromburning alive and then boiling and eating Dieskau and smoking his fleshin their pipes, in revenge for some of their chiefs killed in the fight, shows what an alliance with Indians meant. 

There was small gain to the English from Johnson's success. He was toocautious to advance towards Canada; and, as winter came on, he broke uphis camp and sent his men to their homes. The colonies had no permanentmilitary equipment. Each autumn their forces were dissolved to bereorganized again in the following spring, a lame method of waging war. 

For three years longer in the valley of the Ohio, as elsewhere, thestar of France remained in the ascendant. It began to decline only when, farther east, on the Atlantic, superior forces sent out from Englandwere able to check the French. During the summer of 1758, while Wolfeand Boscawen were pounding the walls of Louisbourg, seven thousandtroops led by General Forbes, Colonel George Washington, and ColonelHenry Bouquet, pushed their way through the wilds beyond the Alleghaniesand took possession of the Ohio. The French destroyed Fort Duquesne andfled. On the 25th of November the English occupied the place and namedit "Pitts-Bourgh" in honor of their great war minister. 

CHAPTER VII. The Expulsion Of The Acadians

We have now to turn back over a number of years to see what has beenhappening in Acadia, that oldest and most easterly part of New Francewhich in 1710 fell into British hands. Since the Treaty of Utrechtin 1713 the Acadians had been nominally British subjects. But theFrenchman, hardly less than the Jew, is difficult of absorption by otherracial types. We have already noted the natural aim of France to recoverwhat she had lost and her use of the priests to hold the Acadians toher interests. The Acadians were secure in the free exercise of theirreligion. They had no secular leaders and few, if any, clergy of theirown. They were led chiefly by priests, subjects of France, who, thoughworking in British territory, owned no allegiance to Great Britain, andwere directed by the Bishop of Quebec. 

For forty years the question of the Acadians remained unsettled. Under the Treaty of 1713 the Acadians might leave the country. If theyremained a year they must become British subjects. When, however, in1715, two years after the conclusion of the treaty, they were requiredto take the oath of allegiance to the new King, George I, they declaredthat they could not do so, since they were about to move to Cape Breton. When George II came to the throne in 1727, the oath was again demanded. Still, however, the Acadians were between two fires. Their Indianneighbors, influenced by the French, threatened them with massacre ifthey took the oath, while the British declared that they would forfeittheir farms if they refused. The truth is that the British did notwish to press the alternative. To drive out the Acadians would be tostrengthen the neighboring French colony of Cape Breton. To force onthem the oath might even cause a rising which would overwhelm the fewEnglish in Nova Scotia. So the tradition, never formally accepted by theBritish, grew up that, while the Acadians owed obedience to George II, they would be neutral in case of war with France. A common name for themused by the British themselves was that of the Neutral French. In timeof peace the Acadians could be left to themselves. When, however, warbroke out between Britain and France the question of loyalty becameacute. Such war there was in 1744. Without doubt, some Acadians thenhelped the French--but it was, as they protested, only under compulsionand, as far as they could, they seem to have refused to aid either side. The British muttered threats that subjects of their King who would notfight for him had no right to protection under British law. Even thenfeeling was so high that there was talk of driving the Acadians fromtheir farms and setting them adrift; and these poor people trembled fortheir own fate when the British victors at Louisbourg in 1745 removedthe French population to France. Assurances came from the Britishgovernment, however, that there was no thought of molesting theAcadians. 

With the order "As you were" the dominant thought of the Treaty ofAix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the highly organized and efficient championsof French policy took every step to ensure that in the next struggle theinterests of France should prevail. Peace had no sooner been signedthan Versailles was working in Nova Scotia on the old policy. The Frenchpriests taught that eternal perdition awaited the Catholic Acadians whoshould accept the demands of the heretic English. The Indians continuedtheir savage threats. Blood is thicker than water and no doubt thenatural sympathies of the Acadians were with the French. But the Britishwere now formidable. For them the founding of Halifax in 1749 had madeall the difference. They, too, had a menacing fortress at the door ofthe Acadians, and their tone grew sterner. As a result the Acadians weretold that if, by October 15, 1749, they had not taken an unconditionaloath of allegiance to George II, they should forfeit their rights andtheir property, the treasured farms on which they and their ancestorshad toiled. The Acadians were in acute distress. If they yielded to theEnglish, not only would their bodies be destroyed by the savage MicmacIndians, but their immortal souls, they feared, would be in danger. 

The Abbe Le Loutre was the parish priest of the Acadian village ofBeaubassin on Chignecto Bay and also missionary to the Micmac Indians, whose chief village lay in British territory not many miles fromHalifax. British officials of the time denounced him as a determinedfanatic who did not stop short of murder. As in most men, there was inLe Loutre a mingling of qualities. He was arrogant, domineering, andintent on his own plans. He hated the English and their heresy, and hepreached to his people against them with frantic invective. He incitedhis Indians to bloodshed. But he also knew pity. The custom of theIndians was to consider prisoners taken by them as their property, and on one occasion Le Loutre himself paid ransom to the Indians forthirty-seven English captives and returned them to Halifax. It iscertain that the French government counted upon the influence of Frenchpriests to aid its political designs. "My masters, God and the King" wasa phrase of the Sulpician father Piquet working at this time on theSt. Lawrence. Le Loutre could have echoed the words. He was an ardentpolitician and France supplied him with both money and arms to inducethe Indians to attack the English. The savages haunted the outskirts ofHalifax, waylaid and scalped unhappy settlers, and, in due course, were paid from Louisbourg according to the number of scalps which theyproduced. The deliberate intention was to make new English settlementsimpossible in Nova Scotia and so to discourage the English that theyshould abandon Halifax. All this intrigue occurred in 1749 and theyears following the treaty of peace. If the English suffered, so did theAcadians. Le Loutre told them that if once they became British subjectsthey would lose their priests and find their religion suppressed. Acadians who took the oath would, he said, be denied the sacramentsof the Church. He would also turn loose on the offenders the murderoussavages whom he controlled. If pressed by the English, the Acadians, rather than yield, must abandon their lands and remove into Frenchterritory. 

At this point arises the question as to what were the limits of thisFrench territory. In yielding Acadia in 1713, France had not definedits boundaries. The English claimed that it included the whole regionstretching northeastward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the frontierof New England. The French, however, said that Acadia meant only thepeninsula of Nova Scotia ending at the isthmus between Baie Verte andthe Bay of Chignecto; and for years a Canadian force stood there onguard, daring the British to put a foot on the north side of the littleriver Missaguash, which the French said was the international boundary. 

There was much excitement among the Acadians in 1750, when an Englishforce landed on the isthmus and proceeded to throw up defenses on thesouth side of the river. This outpost, which in due time became FortLawrence, was placed on what even the French admitted to be Britishterritory. Forthwith on a hill two or three miles away, on the otherside of the supposed boundary, the French built Fort Beausejour. LeLoutre was on the spot, blustering and menacing. He told his Acadianparishioners of the little village of Beaubassin, near Fort Lawrence andwithin the British area, that rather than accept English rule they mustnow abandon their lands and seek the protection of the French at FortBeausejour. With his own hands he set fire to the village church. Thehouses of the Acadians were also burned. A whole district was laid wasteby fire. Women and children suffered fearful privations--but what didsuch things matter in view of the high politics of the priest and ofFrance?

During four or five years the hostile forts confronted each other. Intime of peace there was war. The French made Beausejour a solid fort, for it still stands, little altered, though it has been abandoned fora century and a half. It was chiefly the Acadians, nominal Britishsubjects, who built these thick walls. 

The arrogant Micmacs demanded that the British should hand over tothem the best half of Nova Scotia, and they emphasized their demandby treachery and massacre. One day a man, in the uniform of a Frenchofficer, followed by a small party, approached Fort Lawrence, wavinga white flag. Captain Howe with a small force went out to meet him. Asthis party advanced, Indians concealed behind a dike fired and killedHowe and eight or ten others. Such ruses were well fitted to cause amongthe English a resolve to enforce severe measures. The fire burned slowlybut in the end it flamed up in a cruel and relentless temper. Frenchpolicy, too, showed no pity. The Governor of Canada and the colonialminister in France were alike insistent that the English should be givenno peace and cared nothing for the sufferings of the unhappy Acadiansbetween the upper and the nether millstone. 

At last, in 1755, the English accomplished something decisive. They sentan army to Fort Lawrence, attacked Fort Beausejour, forced its timidcommander Vergor to surrender, mastered the whole surrounding country, and obliged Le Loutre himself to fly to Quebec. There he embarked forFrance. The English captured him on the sea, however, and the relentlessand cruel priest spent many years in an English prison. His later years, when he reached France, do him some credit. By that time the Acadianshad been driven from their homes. There were nearly a thousand exiles inEngland. Le Loutre tried to befriend these helpless people and obtainedhomes for some of them in the parish of Belle-Isle-en-Mer in France. 

In the meantime the price of Le Loutre's intrigues and of the outragesof the French and their Indian allies was now to be paid by the unhappyAcadians. During the spring and summer of 1755, the British decidedthat the question of allegiance should be settled at once, and that theAcadians must take the oath. There was need of urgency. The army at FortLawrence which had captured Fort Beausejour was largely composed of menfrom New England, and these would wish to return to their homes forthe winter. If the Acadians remained and were hostile, the country thusoccupied at laborious cost might quickly revert to the French. Alreadymany Acadians had fought on the side of the French and some of them, disguised as Indians, had joined in savage outrage. A French fleet anda French army were reported as likely to arrive before the winter. In fact, France's naval power with its base at Louisbourg was stillstronger than that of Britain with its base at Halifax. When theAcadians were told in plain terms that they must take the oath ofallegiance, they firmly declined to do so without certain limitationsinvolving guarantees that they should not be arrayed against France. The Governor at Halifax, Major Charles Lawrence, was a stern, relentlessman, without pity, and his mind was made up. Shirley, Governor ofMassachusetts, was in touch with Lawrence. The Acadians should bedeported if they would not take the oath. This step, however, thegovernment at London never ordered. On the contrary, as late as onAugust 13, 1755, Lawrence was counseled to act with caution, prudence, and tact in dealing with the "Neutrals, " as the Acadians are called evenin this official letter. Meanwhile, without direct warrant from London, Lawrence and his council at Halifax had taken action. His reasoning wasthat of a direct soldier. The Acadians would not take the full oathof British citizenship. Very well. Quite obviously they could not betrusted. Already they had acted in a traitorous way. Prolonged war withFrance was imminent. Since Acadians who might be allied with the savagescould attack British posts, they must be removed. To replace them, British settlers could in time be brought into the country. 

The thing was done in the summer and autumn of 1755. Colonel RobertMonckton, a regular officer, son of an Irish peer, who always showedan ineffable superiority to provincial officers serving under him, wasplaced in charge of the work. He ordered the male inhabitants of theneighborhood of Beausejour to meet him there on the 10th of August. Onlyabout one-third of them came--some four hundred. He told them that thegovernment at Halifax now declared them rebels. Their lands and allother goods were forfeited; they themselves were to be kept in prison. Not yet, however, was made known to them the decision that they were tobe treated as traitors of whom the province must be rid. No attempt wasmade anywhere to distinguish loyal from disloyal Acadians. Lawrence gaveorders to the military officers to clear the country of all Acadians, to get them by any necessary means on board the transports which wouldcarry them away, and to burn their houses and crops so that those notcaught might perish or be forced to surrender during the coming winter. At the moment, the harvest had just been reaped or was ripening. 

When the stern work was done at Grand Pre, at Pisiquid, now Windsor, atAnnapolis, there were harrowing scenes. In command of the work at GrandPre was Colonel Winslow, an officer from Massachusetts--some of whoserelatives twenty-five years later were to be driven, because of theirloyalty to the British King, from their own homes in Boston to thisvery land of Acadia. Winslow issued a summons in French to all the maleinhabitants, down to lads of ten, to come to the church at Grand Pre onFriday, the 5th of September, to learn the orders he had to communicate. Those who did not appear were to forfeit their goods. No doubt manyAcadians did not understand the summons. Few of them could read and ithardly mattered to them that on one occasion a notice on the church doorwas posted upside down. Some four hundred anxious peasants appeared. Winslow read to them a proclamation to the effect that their houses andlands were forfeited and that they themselves and their families wereto be deported. Five vessels from Boston lay at Grand Pre. In time moreships arrived, but chill October had come before Winslow was finallyready. 

By this time the Acadians realized what was to happen. The men werejoined by their families. As far as possible the people of the samevillage were kept together. They were forced to march to the transports, a sorrow-laden company, women carrying babes in their arms, old anddecrepit people borne in carts, young and strong men dragging whatbelongings they could gather. Winslow's task, as he says, lay heavy onhis heart and hands: "It hurts me to hear their weeping and wailingand gnashing of teeth. " By the 1st of November he had embarked fifteenhundred unhappy people. His last ship-load he sent off on the 13th ofDecember. The suffering from cold must have been terrible. 

In all, from Grand Pre and other places, more than six thousand Acadianswere deported. They were scattered in the English colonies from Maine toGeorgia and in both France and England. Many died; many, helpless in newsurroundings, sank into decrepit pauperism. Some reached people of theirown blood in the French colony of Louisiana and in Canada. A good manyreturned from their exile in the colonies to their former home after theSeven Years' War had ended. Today their descendants form an appreciablepart of the population of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince EdwardIsland. The cruel act did one thing effectively: it made Nova Scotiasafe for the British cause in the attack that was about to be directedagainst Canada. 

CHAPTER VIII. The Victories Of Montcalm

In France's last, most determined, and most tragic struggle for NorthAmerica, the noblest aspect is typified in the figure of Montcalm. 

The circle of the King and his mistress at Versailles does not tell thewhole story of France at this time. No doubt Madame de Pompadourmade and unmade ministers, but behind the ministers was the greatadministrative system of France, with servants alert and efficient, andnow chiefly occupied with military plans to defeat the great Frederickof Prussia. At the same time the intellect of France was busy withproblems of science and was soon to express itself in the massivevolumes of Diderot's Encyclopaedia. The soldiers of France werepreparing to fight on many battlefields. The best of them took littlepart in the debilitating pleasures of Versailles. 

Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, was a member of the ancient nobilityof Languedoc, in the south of France. He was a scholar, a soldier, anda landowner. He could write a Latin inscription, fight a battle, andmanage a farm--all with excellence. His was a fruitful race. His wifehad borne him ten children, of whom six had survived. He was sincerelyreligious, a family man, enjoying quiet evenings at home. In his career, as no doubt in that of many other French leaders of the time, we find nolurid lights, no gay scenes at court--nothing but simple and laboriousdevotion to duty. Though a grand seigneur, Montcalm was poor. Hisletters show that his mind was always much occupied with family affairs, the need of economy, the careers of his sons, his mill, his plantations. He showed the minute care in management which the French practise betterthan the English. In 1756 he was forty-four years of age, a soldier whohad campaigned in Germany, Bohemia, and Italy, had known victory anddefeat, had been a prisoner in the hands of the Austrians, and had madea reputation as a man fit to lead. He lived far from court and went toParis only rarely. It was this quiet man who, on January 31, 1756, wassummoned to Paris to head the military force about to be sent to Canada. Dieskau was a captive in English hands, and Montcalm was to replaceDieskau. 

Thus began that connection of Montcalm with Canada which was destinedthree or four years later to bring to him first victory and then defeat, death, and undying fame. On receiving his appointment he went to Paris, thanked the King in person for the honor done him, and was delightedthat his son, a mere boy, was given the rank and pay of a colonel, oneof the few abuses of court favor which we find in his career. On March26, 1756, Montcalm embarked at Brest with his staff. War had not yetbeen declared, but already Britain had captured some three hundredFrench merchant ships, had taken prisoner nearly ten thousand Frenchsailors, and was sweeping from the sea the fleets of France. 

Owing to the fear of British cruisers, the voyage of Montcalm had itsexcitements. As usual, however, France was earlier in the field thanBritain, who had in April no force ready for America which couldintercept Montcalm. The storms were heavy, and on Easter Day, when Masswas celebrated, a sailor firm on his feet had to hold the chalice forthe officiating priest. On board there were daily prayers, and alwaysthe service ended with cries of "God save the King!" Some of theofficers on board were destined to survive to a new era in France whenthere should be no more a king. 

Montcalm had with him a capable staff and a goodly number of youngofficers, gay, debonair, thinking not of great political designs aboutAmerica but chiefly of their own future careers in France, and facingdeath lightheartedly enough. Next to Montcalm in command was theChevalier de Uvis, a member of a great French family and himselfdestined to attain the high rank of Marshal of France, and a capablethough not a brilliant soldier, whose chief gift was tact and the artof managing men. Third in command was the Chevalier de Bourlamaque, aquiet, reserved man, with no striking social gifts and in consequencenot likely at first to make a good impression, though Montcalm, who wasat the beginning a little doubtful of his quality, came in the end torely upon him fully. The most brilliant man in that company was theyoung Colonel de Bougainville, Montcalm's chief aide-de-camp. Thoughonly twenty-seven years old he was already famous in the world ofscience and was destined to be still more famous as a great navigator, to live through the whole period of the French Revolution, and to dieonly on the eve of the fall of Napoleon. In 1756 he was too young andclever to be always prudent in speech. It is from his quick eye andeager pen that we learn much of the inner story of these last days ofNew France. Montcalm discusses frankly in his letters these and otherofficers, with whom he was on the whole well pleased. In his hearthe could echo the words of Bougainville as he watched the brilliantspectacle of the embarkation at Brest: "What a nation is ours! Happy ishe who leads and is worthy of it. "

It was in this spirit of confidence that Montcalm faced the strugglein America. For him sad days were to come and his sunny, vivacious, southern temperament caused him to suffer keenly. At first, however, allwas full of brilliant promise. So eager was he that, when his ships laybecalmed in the St. Lawrence some thirty miles below Quebec, he landedand drove to the city. It is the most beautiful country in the world, he writes, highly cultivated, with many houses, the peasants livingmore like the lesser gentry of France than like peasants, and speakingexcellent French. He found the hospitality in Quebec such that aParisian would be surprised at the profusion of good things of everykind. The city was, he thought, like the best type of the cities ofFrance. The Canadian climate was health-giving, the sky clear, thesummer not unlike that of Languedoc, but the winter trying, since thesevere weather caused the inhabitants to remain too much indoors. Hedescribed the Canadian ladies as witty, lively, devout, those ofQuebec amusing themselves at play, sometimes for high stakes; those ofMontreal, with conversation and dancing. He confessed that one ofthem proved a little too fascinating for his own peace of mind. Theintolerable thing was the need to meet and pay court to the Indians whomthe Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, regarded as valuable allies. These savages, brutal, changeable, exacting, Montcalm from the firstdespised. It filled him with disgust to see them swarming in the streetsof Montreal, sometimes carrying bows and arrows, their coarse featuresworse disfigured by war-paint and a gaudy headdress of feathers, theirheads shaven, with the exception of one long scalp-lock, their gleamingbodies nearly naked or draped with dirty buffalo or beaver skins. Whatallies for a refined grand seigneur of France! It was a costly burdento feed them. Sometimes they made howling demands for brandy and forbouillon, by which they meant human blood. Many of them were cannibals. Once Montcalm had to give some of them, at his own cost, a feast ofthree oxen roasted whole. To his disgust, they gorged themselves anddanced round the room shouting their savage war-cries. 

The Governor of Canada, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, belongedto one of the most ancient families of France, related to that of Levis. He had been born in Canada where his father was Governor for the longperiod of twenty-two years, from 1703 to 1725, and in his outlook andprejudices he was wholly of New France, with a passionate devotion toits people, and a deep resentment at any airs of superiority assumed bythose who came from old France. A certain admiration is due to Vaudreuilfor his championship of the Canadians and even of the savages of theland of his birth against officers of his own rank and caste who camefrom France. There was in Canada the eternal cleavage in outlook andmanners between the Old World and the New, which is found in equalstrength in New England, and which was one of the chief factors incausing the American Revolution. Vaudreuil, born at Quebec in 1698, hadclimbed the official ladder step by step until, in 1742, he had beenmade Governor of Louisiana, a post he held for three years. He succeededthe Marquis Duquesne as Governor of Canada in the year before Montcalmarrived. He meant well but he was a vain man, always a leading figure inthe small society about him, and obsessed by a fussy self-importance. Hewas not clever enough to see through flattery. The Intendant Bigot, nextto the Governor the most important man in Canada, an able and corruptrascal, knew how to manage the Governor and to impose his own will uponthe weaker man. Vaudreuil and his wife between them had a swarm of needyrelatives in Canada, and these and other Canadians who sought favorsfrom the Governor helped to sharpen his antagonism to the officers fromFrance. Vaudreuil believed himself a military genius. It was he and notMontcalm who had the supreme military command, and he regarded as anunnecessary intruder this general officer sent out from France. 

Now that Montcalm was come, Vaudreuil showed a malignant alertness, bornof jealousy, to snub and check him. Outward courtesies were, of course, maintained. Vaudreuil could be bland and Montcalm restrained, in spiteof his southern temperament, but their dispatches show the bitterness intheir relations. The court of France encouraged not merely the leadersbut even officers in subordinate posts to communicate to it their views. A voluble correspondence about affairs in Canada has been preserved. Vaudreuil himself must have tried the patience of the French ministersfor he wrote at prodigious length, exalting his own achievements to thepoint of being ludicrous. At the same time he belittled everything doneby Montcalm, complained that he was ruining the French cause in America, hinted that he was in league with corrupt elements in Canada, and inthe end even went so far as to request his recall in order that the morepliant Levis might be put in his place. The letters of Montcalm are morereserved. Unlike Vaudreuil, he never stooped to falsehood. He knew thathe was under the orders of the Governor and he accepted the situation. When operations were on hand, Vaudreuil would give Montcalm instructionsso ambiguous that if he failed he would be sure to get the discredit, while, if he succeeded, to Vaudreuil would belong the glory. 

War is, at best, a cruel business. In Europe its predatory barbarity waspassing away and there the lives of prisoners and of women and childrenwere now being respected. Montcalm had been reared under this morecivilized code, and he and his officers were shocked by what Vaudreuilregarded as normal and proper warfare. In 1756 the French had a horde ofabout two thousand savages, who had flocked to Montreal from points asfar distant as the great plains of the West. They numbered more thanthirty separate tribes or nations, as in their pride they calledthemselves, and each nation had to be humored and treated as an equal, for they were not in the service of France but were her allies. Theyexpected to be consulted before plans of campaign were completed. Thedefeat of Braddock in 1755 had made them turn to the prosperous cause ofFrance. Vaudreuil gave them what they hardly required--encouragement towage war in their own way. The more brutal and ruthless the war on theEnglish, he said, the more quickly would their enemies desire thekind of peace that France must have. The result was that the westernfrontiers of the English colonies became a hell of ruthless massacre. The savages attacked English settlements whenever they found themundefended. A pioneer might go forth in the morning to his labor andreturn in the evening to find his house in ashes and his wife andchildren lying dead with the scalps torn from their heads as trophies ofsavage prowess. 

For years, until the English gained the upper hand over the French, this awful massacre went on. Hundreds of women and children perished. Vaudreuil reported with pride to the French court the number of scalpstaken, and in his annals such incidents were written down as victories, He warned Montcalm that he must not be too strict with the savages orsome day they would take themselves off and possibly go over to theEnglish and leave the French without indispensable allies. He complainedof the lofty tone of the French regular officers towards both Indiansand Canadians, and assured the French court that it was only his owntact which prevented an open breach. 

Canada lay exposed to attack by three routes by Lake Ontario, by LakeChamplain, and by the St. Lawrence and the sea. It was vital to controlthe route to the West by Lake Ontario, vital to keep the Englishfrom invading Canada by way of Lake Champlain, vital to guard theSt. Lawrence and keep open communications with France. Montcalm firstdirected his attention to Lake Ontario. Oswego, lying on the southshore, was a fort much prized by the English as a base from which theycould attack the French Fort Frontenac on the north side of the lake andcut off Canada from the West. If the English could do this, they wouldredeem the failure of Braddock and possibly turn the Indians from aFrench to an English alliance. 

The French, in turn, were resolved to capture and destroy Oswego. In thesummer of 1756, they were busy drawing up papers and instructions forthe attack. Montcalm wrote to his wife that he had never before workedso hard. He kept every one busy, his aide-de-camp, his staff, and hissecretaries. No detail was too minute for his observation. He regulatedthe changes of clothes which the officers might carry with them. Heinspected hospitals, stores, and food, and he even ordered an alterationin the method of making bread. He reorganized the Canadian battalionsand in every quarter stirred up new activity. He was strict aboutgranting leave of absence. Sometimes his working day endured for twentyhours--to bed at midnight and up again at four o'clock in the morning. He went with Levis to Lake Champlain to see with his own eyes what wasgoing on there. Then he turned back to Montreal. The discipline amongthe Canadian troops was poor and he stiffened it, thereby naturallycausing great offense to those who liked slack ways and hated to taketrouble about sanitation and equipment. He held interminable conferenceswith his Indian allies. They were astonished to find that the greatsoldier of whom they had heard so much was so small in stature, butthey noted the fire in his eye. He despised their methods of warfare andnotes with a touch of irony that, while every other barbarity continues, the burning of prisoners at the stake has rather gone out of fashion, though the savages recently burned an English woman and her son merelyto keep in practice. 

Montcalm made his plans secretly and struck suddenly. In the middleof August, 1756, he surprised and captured Oswego and took more thansixteen hundred prisoners. Of these, in spite of all that he could do, his Indians murdered some. The blow was deadly. The English lost vaststores; and now the French controlled the whole region of the GreatLakes. The Indians were on the side of the rising power more heartilythan ever, and the unhappy frontier of the English colonies was soharried that murderous savages ventured almost to the outskirts ofPhiladelphia. Montcalm caused a Te Deum to be sung on the scene of hisvictory at Oswego. In August he was back in Montreal where again wassung another joyous Te Deum. He wrote letters in high praise of someof his officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause, the last "un homme divin. " Some of the Canadian officers, praised byVaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget, " he wroteto Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattlingboaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worthspeaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud. " This Rigaudwas the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister, he, for his part, said that the success of the expedition was wholly dueto his own vigilance and firmness, aided chiefly by this brother, "mon frere, " and Le Mercier, both of whom Montcalm describes as inept. Vaudreuil adds that only his own tact kept the Indian allies from goinghome because Montcalm would not let them have the plunder which theydesired. 

Montcalm struck his next blow at the English on Lake Champlain. In July, 1757, he had eight thousand men at Ticonderoga, at the northern end ofLake George. Two thousand of these were savages drawn from more thanforty different tribes--a lawless horde whom the French could notcontrol. A Jesuit priest saw a party of them squatting round a fire inthe French camp roasting meat on the end of sticks and found thatthe meat was the flesh of an Englishman. English prisoners, sick withhorror, were forced to watch this feast. The priest's protest wasdismissed with anger: the savages would follow their own customs; letthe French follow theirs. The truth is that the French had been onlytoo successful in drawing the savages to them as allies. They formednow one-quarter of the whole French army. They were of little use asfighters and probably, in the long run, the French would have beenbetter off without them. If, however, Montcalm had caused them to go, Vaudreuil would have made frantic protests, so that Montcalm acceptedthe necessity of such allies. 

Each success, however, brought some new horrors at the hands of theIndians. Montcalm captured Fort William Henry, at the southern end ofLake George, in August, a year after the taking of Oswego. Fort WilliamHenry was the most advanced English post in the direction of Canada. Theplace had been left weak, for the Earl of Loudoun, Commander-in-Chief ofthe British forces in America, was using his resources for an expeditionagainst Louisbourg, which wholly failed. Colonel Monro, the braveofficer in command at Fort William Henry, made a strong defense, but wasforced to surrender. The terms were that he should march out with hissoldiers and the civilians of the place, and should be escorted insafety to Fort Edward, about eighteen miles to the south. This timethe savages surpassed themselves in treachery and savagery. They hadformally approved of the terms of surrender, but they attacked the longline of defeated English as they set out on the march, butchered some oftheir wounded, and seized hundreds of others as prisoners. Montcalm didwhat he could and even risked his life to check the savages. But somefifty English lay dead and the whole savage horde decamped for Montrealcarrying with them two hundred prisoners. 

Montcalm burned Fort William Henry and withdrew to Ticonderoga at thenorth end of the lake. Why, asked Vaudreuil, had he not advanced furthersouth into English territory, taken Fort Edward--weak, because theEnglish were in a panic--menaced Albany itself, and advanced even to NewYork? Montcalm's answer was that Fort Edward was still strong, that hehad no transport except the backs of his men to take cannon eighteenmiles by land in order to batter its walls, and that his Indians hadleft him. Moreover, he had been instructed to hasten his operations andallow his Canadians to go home to gather the ripening harvest so thatCanada might not starve during the coming winter. Vaudreuil pressed atthe French court his charges against Montcalm and without doubt producedsome effect. French tact was never exhibited with more grace than inthe letters which Montcalm received from his superiors in France, urgingupon him with suave courtesy the need of considering the sensitive prideof the colonial forces and of guiding with a light rein the barbaricmight of the Indian allies. It is hard to imagine an English Secretaryof State administering a rebuke so gently and yet so unmistakably. Montcalm well understood what was meant. He knew that some intrigue hadbeen working at court but he did not suspect that the Governor himself, all blandness and compliments to his face, was writing to Parisvoluminous attacks on his character and conduct. 

In the next summer (1758) Montcalm won another great success. He laywith his forces at Ticonderoga. The English were determined to pressinto the heart of Canada by way of Lake Champlain. All through thewinter, after the fall of Fort William Henry, they had been makingpreparations on a great scale at Albany. By this time Amherst and Wolfewere on the scene in America, and they spent this summer in an attackon Louisbourg which resulted in the fall of the fortress. On the oldfighting ground of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the English were thisyear making military efforts such as the Canadian frontier had neverbefore seen. William Pitt, who now directed the war from London, haddemanded that the colonies should raise twenty thousand men, anumber well fitted to dismay the timid legislators of New York andPennsylvania. At Albany fifteen thousand men came marching in bydetachments--a few of them regulars, but most of them colonial militiawho, as soon as winter came on, would scatter to their homes. The leaderwas General Abercromby--a leader, needless to say, with good connectionsin England, but with no other qualification for high command. 

On July 5, 1758, there was a sight on Lake George likely to cause aflutter of anxiety in the heart of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. In a lineof boats, six miles long, the great English host came down the lake and, early on the morning of the sixth, landed before the fort which Montcalmwas to defend. The soul of the army had been a brilliant young officer, Lord Howe, who shared the hardships of the men, washed his own linen atthe brook, and was the real leader trusted by the inept Abercromby. Itwas a tragic disaster for the British that at the outset of the fightHowe was killed in a chance skirmish. Montcalm's chief defense ofTiconderoga consisted in a felled forest. He had cut down hundredsof trees and, on high ground in front of the fort, made a formidableabbatis across which the English must advance. Abercromby had four mento one of Montcalm. Artillery would have knocked a passage through thetrunks of the trees which formed the abbatis. Abercromby, however, didnot wait to bring up artillery. He was confident that his huge forcecould beat down opposition by a rapid attack, and he made the attackwith all courage and persistence. But the troops could not work throughthe thicket of fallen trunks and, as night came on, they had to withdrawbaffled. Next day Lake George saw another strange spectacle--a Britisharmy of thirteen thousand men, the finest ever seen hitherto in America, retreating in a panic, with no enemy in pursuit. Nearly two thousandEnglish had fallen, while Montcalm's loss was less than four hundred. Heplanted a great cross on the scene of the fight with an inscriptionin Latin that it was God who had wrought the victory. All Canada had abrief period of rejoicing before the gloom of final defeat settled downupon the country. 

CHAPTER IX. Montcalm At Quebec

The rejoicing in Canada was brief. Before the end of the year theBritish were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the longbattle-line. Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November. Fort Frontenac--giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, theWest--had surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm'svictory at Ticonderoga. The Ohio was gone. The great fortress guardingthe gateway to the Gulf was gone. The next English attack would fallon Quebec. Montcalm had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorousprecision, that the period of petty warfare, for taking scalps andburning houses, was past. It was time now to defend the main trunkof the tree and not the outer branches. The best Canadians should beincorporated into and trained in the battalions of regulars. Themilitia regiments themselves should be clothed and drilled like regularsoldiers. Interior posts, such as Detroit, should be held by thesmallest possible number of men. This counsel enraged Vaudreuil. Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything. Vaudreuil wascertain that the English would not attack Quebec. 

There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm. He wasfighting against fearful odds. With only about three thousand trainedregulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages, he was confronting Britain's might on sea and land which was now thrownagainst New France. From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothingto hope. In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles. Thatbrilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the Britishfleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied andresourceful attempts to secure aid for Canada. He saw ministers. He procured the aid of powerful connections of his own and of hisfellow-officers in Canada. He went to what was at this time thefountainhead of authority at the French court, and it was not theKing. "The King is nothing, " wrote Bougainville, "the Marchioness isall-powerful--prime minister. " Bougainville saw the Marchioness, Madamede Pompadour, and read to her some of Montcalm's letters. She showed nosurprise and said nothing--her habit, as Bougainville said. By this timethe name of Montcalm was one to charm with in France. Bougainville wroteto him "I should have to include all France if I should attempt to givea list of those who love you and wish to see you Marshal of France. Even the little children know your name. " There had been a time when thecourt thought the recall of Montcalm would be wise in the interests ofNew France. Now it was Montcalm's day and the desire to help him wasreal. France, however, could do little. Ministers were courteous andsympathetic; but as Berryer, Minister of Marine, said to Bougainville, with the house on fire in France, they could not take much thought ofthe stable in Canada. 

This Berryer was an inept person. He was blindly ignorant of navalaffairs, coarse, obstinate, a placeman who owed his position tointrigue and favoritism. His only merit was that he tried to cut downexpenditure, but in regard to the navy this policy was likely to befatal. It is useless, said this guardian of France's marine, to try torival Britain on the sea, and the wise thing to do is to save money bynot spending it on ships. Berryer even sold to private persons storeswhich he had on hand for the use of the fleet. If the house was on firehe did not intend, it would seem, that much should be left to burn. Theold Due de Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was of another type, a fine andefficient soldier. He explained the situation frankly in a letterto Montcalm. Austria was an exigent ally, and Frederick of Prussia adangerous foe. France had to concentrate her strength in Europe. TheBritish fleet, he admitted, paralyzed efforts overseas. There was nocertainty, or even probability, that troops and supplies sent fromFrance would ever reach Canada. France, the Duke said guardedly, wasnot without resources. She had a plan to strike a deadly blow againstEngland and, in doing so, would save Canada without sending overseas agreat army. The plan was nothing less than the invasion of England andScotland with a great force, the enterprise which, nearly half acentury later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke against the proudmaritime state. During that winter and spring France was building agreat number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent and toland an army in England. 

If this plan succeeded, all else would succeed. Montcalm must just holdon, conduct a defensive campaign and, above all, retain some part ofCanada since, as the Duke said with prophetic foresight, if the Britishonce held the whole of the country they would never give it up. Montcalmhimself had laid before the court a plan of his own. He estimated thatthe British would have six men to his one. Rather than surrender tothem, he would withdraw to the far interior and take his army by way ofthe Ohio to Louisiana. The design was a wild counsel of despair for hewould be cut off from any base of supplies, but it shows the riskshe was ready to tale. In him now the court had complete confidence. Vaudreuil was instructed to take no military action without seeking thecounsel of Montcalm. "The King, " wrote Belle-Isle to Montcalm, "reliesupon your zeal, your courage and your resolution. " Some little help wassent. The British control of the sea was not complete; since more thantwenty French ships eluded British vigilance, bringing military stores, food (for Canada was confronted by famine), four hundred soldiers, andBougainville himself, with a list of honors for the leaders in Canada. Montcalm was given the rank of Lieutenant-General and, but for atechnical difficulty, would have been made a Marshal of France. 

All this reliance upon Montcalm was galling to Vaudreuil. This weakman was entirely in the hands of a corrupt circle who recognized in thestrength and uprightness of Montcalm their deadly enemy. An incredibleplundering was going on. Its strength was in the blindness of Vaudreuil. The secretary of Vaudreuil, Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, an ignorant andgreedy man, was a member of the ring and yet had the entire confidenceof the Governor. The scale of the robberies was enormous. Bigot, theIntendant, was stealing millions of francs; Cadet, the head of thesupplies department, was stealing even more. They were able men who knewhow to show diligence in their official work. More than once Montcalmpraises the resourcefulness with which Bigot met his requirements. Butit was all done at a fearful cost to the State. Under assumed namesthe ring sold to the King, of whose interests they were the guardians, supplies at a profit of a hundred or a hundred and fifty per cent. Theymade vast sums out of transport. They drew pay for feeding hundreds ofmen who were not in the King's service. They received money for greatbills of merchandise never delivered and repeated the process over andover again. To keep the Indians friendly the King sent presents of guns, ammunition, and blankets. These were stolen and sold. Even the bodies ofAcadians were sold. They were hired out for their keep to a contractorwho allowed them to die of cold and hunger. Hundreds of the poorexiles perished. The nemesis of a despotic system is that, howeverwell-intentioned it may be, its officials are not controlled by an alertpublic opinion and yet must be trusted by their master. France meantwell by her colony but the colony, unlike the English colonies, was nottaught to look after itself. While nearly every one in Canada understoodwhat was going on, it was another thing to inform those in control inFrance. La Porte, the secretary of the colonial minister, was in theservice of the ring. He intercepted letters which should have madeexposures. Until found out, he had the ear of the minister and echoedthe tone of lofty patriotism which Bigot assumed in his letters to hissuperiors. 

History has made Montcalm one of its heroes--and with justice. He was aremarkable man, who would have won fame as a scholar had he not followedthe long family tradition of a soldier's career. Bougainville once saidthat the highest literary distinction of a Frenchman, a chair in theAcademy, might be within reach of Montcalm as well as the baton of aMarshal of France. He had a prodigious memory and had read widely. Hisletters, written amid the trying conditions of war, are nervous, direct, pregnant with meaning, the notes of a penetrating intelligence. He haddeep family affection. "Adieu, my heart, I believe that I love you morethan ever I did before"; these were the last words of what he did notknow was to be his last letter to his wife. In the midst of a gay sceneat Montreal, in the spring of 1759, he writes to Bourlamaque, thenat Lake Champlain, with acute longing for the south of France in thespring. For six or seven months in the year he could receive no lettersand always the British command of the sea made their expected arrivaluncertain. "When shall I be again at the Chateau of Candiac, with myplantations, my oaks, my oil mill, my mulberry trees? O good God. " Helays bare his spirit especially to Bourlamaque, a quiet, efficient, thoughtful man, like himself, and enjoins him to burn the letters--whichhe does not, happily for posterity. Scandal does not touch him but, likemost Frenchmen, he is dependent on the society of women. He lived in ahouse on the ramparts of Quebec and visited constantly the salons ofhis neighbor in the Rue du Parloir, the beautiful and witty Madame de laNaudiere. In two or three other households he was also intimate andthe Bishop was a sympathetic friend. His own tastes were those of thescholar, and more and more, during the long Canadian winters, heenjoyed evenings of quiet reading. The elder Mirabeau, father of therevolutionary leader of 1789, had just published his "Ami des Hommes"and this we find Montcalm studying. But above all he reads the greatencyclopaedia of Diderot. By 1759 seven of the huge volumes had beenissued. They startled the intellectual world of the time and Montcalmset out to read them, omitting the articles which had no interestfor him or which he could not understand. C is a copious letter inan encyclopaedia, and Montcalm found excellent the articles onChristianity, College, Comedy, Comet, Commerce, Council, and so on. Wolfe--soon to be his opponent--had the same taste for letters. The twomen, unlike in body, for Wolfe was tall and Montcalm the opposite, werealike in spirit, painstaking students as well as men of action. 

At first Montcalm had not realized what was the deepest shadow inthe life of Canada. Perhaps chiefly because Vaudreuil was always atMontreal, Montcalm preferred Quebec and was surprised and charmed bythe life of that city. It had, he said, the air of a real capital. Therewere fair women and brave men, sumptuous dinners with forty or fiftycovers, brilliantly lighted salons, a vivid social life in which he wasmuch courted. The Intendant Bigot was agreeable and efficient. Soon, however, Montcalm had misgivings. It was a gambling age, but he wasstaggered by the extent of the gambling at the house of the Intendant. He did not wish to break with Bigot, and there was perhaps someweakness in his failure to denounce the orgies from which his consciencerevolted. He warned his own officers but he could not control thecolonial officers, and Vaudreuil was too weak to check a man like Bigot. Whence came the money? In time, Montcalm understood well enough. Hehimself was poor. To discharge the duties of his position he was goinginto debt, and he had even to consider the possible selling of hisestablishment in France. He had to beg the court for some financialrelief. At the same time he saw about him a wild extravagance. There wasfamine in Canada. During the winter of 1758-59 the troops were put onshort rations and, in spite of their bitter protests, had to eat horseflesh. Suffering and starvation bore heavily on the poor. Through lackof food people fell fainting in the streets. But the circle of Bigotpaid little heed and feasted, danced, and gambled. Montcalm pours outhis soul to Bourlamaque. He spends, he says, sleepless nights, and hismind is almost disordered by what he sees. In his journal he notes hisown fight with poverty and its contrast with the careless luxury ofa crowd of worthless hangers-on making four or five hundred thousandfrancs a year and insulting decency by their lavish expenditure. One ofthe ring, a clerk with a petty salary, a base creature, spends more oncarriages, horses, and harness than a foppish and reckless young memberof the nouveaux-riches would spend in France. Corruption in Canada isprotected by corruption in France. Montcalm cries out with a devotionwhich his sovereign hardly deserved, though it was due to Franceherself, "O King, worthy of better service, dear France, crushed bytaxes to enrich greedy knaves!"

The weary winter of 1758-59 at length came to an end. In May the shipsalready mentioned arrived from France, bringing Bougainville and, amongother things, the news that Pitt was sending great forces for a decisiveattack on Canada. At that very moment, indeed, the British ships wereentering the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Canada had already been cut offfrom France. Montcalm held many councils with his officers. The strategydecided upon was to stand at bay at Quebec, to strike the enemy if heshould try to land, and to hold out until the approach of winter shouldforce the retirement of the British fleet. 

CHAPTER X. The Strategy Of Pitt

During four campaigns the British had suffered humiliating disasters. It is the old story in English history of caste privilege and deadlyroutine bringing to the top men inadequate in the day of trial. It hashappened since, even in our own day, as it has happened so often before. It seems that imminent disaster alone will arouse the nation to itsbest military effort. In 1757, however, England was thoroughly aroused. Failure then on her own special element, the sea, touched her vitally. Admiral Byng--through sheer cowardice, as was charged--had failed toattack a French fleet aiding in the siege of the island of Minorca whichwas held by the English, and Minorca had fallen to the French. Such wasthe popular clamor at this disaster that Byng was tried, condemned, and shot. There was also an upheaval in the government. At no time inEnglish history were men more eager for the fruits of office; and now, even in a great crisis, the greed for spoils could not be shaken off. The nation demanded a conduct of the war which sought efficiency aboveall else. The politicians, however, insisted on government favors. 

In the end a compromise was reached. At the head of the governmentwas placed a politician, the Duke of Newcastle, who loved jobbery andpatronage in politics and who doled out offices to his supporters. Atthe War Office was placed Pitt with a free hand to carry on militaryoperations. He was the terrible cornet of horse who had harried Walpolein the days when that minister was trying to keep out of war. He knewand even loved war; his fierce national pride had been stirred topassion by the many humiliations at the hand of France; and now he wasresolved to organize, to spend, and to fight, until Britain trampledon France. He had the nation behind him. He bullied and frightened theHouse of Commons. Members trembled if Pitt turned on them. By his fieryenergy, by making himself a terror to weakness and incompetence, he wonfor Britain the Seven Years' War. 

Though Pitt became Secretary of State for War in June, 1757, not until1758 did the tide begin to turn in America. But when it did turn, itflowed with resistless force. In little more than a year the doom of NewFrance was certain. The first great French reverse was at a point wherethe naval and military power of Britain could unite in attack. Pitt wellunderstood the need of united action by the two services. Halifax becamethe radiating center of British activities. Here, in 1757, beforePitt was well in the saddle, a fleet and an army gathered to attackLouisbourg--an enterprise not carried out that year partly becauseFrance had a great fleet on the spot, and partly, too, on account of thebad quality of British leadership. 

Only in the campaign of 1758 did Pitt's dominance become effective. Withhim counted one quality and one alone, efficiency. The old guard at theWar Office were startled when men with rank, years, influence, and everyother claim but competence for their tasks, were passed over, and youngand obscure men were given high command. To America in the springof 1758 were sent officers hitherto little known. Edward Boscawen, Commander of the Fleet, and veteran among these leaders, was acomparatively young man, only forty-seven; Jeffrey Amherst, just turnedforty, was Commander-in-Chief on land. Next in command to Amherst wasJames Wolfe, aged thirty. 

These young and vigorous men knew the value of promptness or theywould not have been tolerated under Pitt. Before the end of May, 1758, Boscawen was in Halifax harbor with a fleet of some forty warships and amultitude of transports. On board were nearly twelve thousand soldiers, more than eleven thousand of them British regulars. The colonial forcesnow play a minor part in the struggle; Pitt was ready to send fromEngland all the troops needed. The array at Halifax, the greatest yetseen in America, numbered about twenty thousand men, including sailors. Before the first of June the fleet was on its way to Louisbourg. Thedefense was stubborn; and James Wolfe, who led the first landing party, had abundant opportunity to prove his courage and capacity. By theend of July, however, Louisbourg had fallen, and nearly six thousandprisoners were in the hands of the English. It was the beginning of theend. 

In the autumn Wolfe was back in England, where he was quickly givencommand of the great expedition which was planned against Quebec forthe following year. Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who seems almost oldcompared with Wolfe, for he was nearly fifty, was in chief command ofthe fleet. Amherst had remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, andwas taking slow, deliberate, thorough measures for the last steps in theconquest of New France. 

To be too late had been the usual fate of the many British expeditionsagainst Canada. No one, however, dared to be late under Pitt. OnFebruary 17, 1759, the greatest fleet that had ever put out for Americaleft Portsmouth. More than two hundred and fifty ships set their sailsfor the long voyage. There were forty-nine warships, carrying fourteenthousand sailors and marines, and two hundred other ships manned byperhaps seven thousand men in the merchant service, but ready to fightif occasion offered. Altogether nearly thirty thousand men now left theshores of England to attack Canada. 

There is a touch of doom for France in the fact that its own lostfortress of Louisbourg was to be the rendezvous of the fleet. Saunders, however, arrived so early that the entrance to Louisbourg was stillblocked with ice, and he went on to Halifax. In time he returned toLouisbourg, and from there the great fleet sailed for Quebec. Thevoyage was uneventful. We can picture the startled gaze of the Canadianpeasants as they saw the stately array, many miles long, pass up theSt. Lawrence. On the 26th of June, Wolfe and Saunders were in the basinbefore Quebec and the great siege had begun which was to mark one of theturning-points in history. 

Nature had furnished a noble setting for the drama now to be enacted. Quebec stands on a bold semicircular rock on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. At the foot of the rock sweeps the mighty river, here at theleast breadth in its whole course, but still a flood nearly a mile wide, deep and strong. Its currents change ceaselessly with the ebb and flowof the tide which rises a dozen feet, though the open sea is eighthundred miles away. Behind the rock of Quebec the small stream of theSt. Charles furnishes a protection on the landward side. Below thefortress, the great river expands into a broad basin with the outflowdivided by the Island of Orleans. In every direction there are cliffsand precipices and rising ground. From the north shore of the greatbasin the land slopes gradually into a remote blue of wooded mountains. The assailant of Quebec must land on low ground commanded everywherefrom heights for seven or eight miles on the east and as many on thewest. At both ends of this long front are further natural defenses--atthe east the gorge of the Montmorency River, at the west that of the CapRouge River. 

Wolfe's desire was to land his army on the Beauport shore at some pointbetween Quebec and Montmorency. But Montcalm's fortified posts, behindwhich lay his army, stretched along the shore for six miles, all the wayfrom the Montmorency to the St. Charles. Wolfe had a great contempt forMontcalm's army--"five feeble French battalions mixed with undisciplinedpeasants. " If only he could get to close quarters with the "wily andcautious old fox, " as he called Montcalm! Already the British had donewhat the French had thought impossible. Without pilots they had steeredtheir ships through treacherous channels in the river and through thedangerous "Traverse" near Cap Tourmente. Captain Cook, destined to be afamous navigator, was there to survey and mark the difficult places, andBritish skippers laughed at the forecasts of disaster made by the pilotswhom they had captured on the river. The French were confident that theBritish would not dare to take their ships farther up the river past thecannonade of the guns in Quebec, though this the British accomplishedalmost without loss. 

Wolfe landed a force upon the lower side of the gorge at Montmorency andanother at the head of the Island of Orleans. He planted batteries atPoint Levis across the river from Quebec, and from there he battered thecity. The pleasant houses in the Rue du Parloir which Montcalm knew sowell were knocked into rubbish, and its fascinating ladies were drivendesolate from the capital. But this bombardment brought Wolfe no nearerhis goal. On the 31st of July he made a frontal attack on the flats atBeauport and failed disastrously with a loss of four hundred men. Timewas fighting for Montcalm. 

By the 1st of September Wolfe's one hope was in a surprise by which hecould land an army above Quebec, the nearer to the fortress the better. Its feeble walls on the landward side could not hold out againstartillery. But Bougainville guarded the high shore and marched his menincessantly up and down to meet threatened attacks. On the heights, thebattalion of Guienne was encamped on the Plains of Abraham to guard theFoulon. This was a cove on the river bank from which there was a path, much used by the French for dragging up provisions, leading to the topof the cliff at a point little more than a mile from the walls of thecity. On the 6th of September the battalion of Guienne was sent backto the Beauport lines by order of Vaudreuil. Montcalm countermandedthe order, but was not obeyed, and Wolfe saw his chance. For days hethreatened a landing, above and below Quebec, now at one point, nowat another, until the French were both mystified and worn out withincessant alarms. Then, early on the morning of the 13th of September, came Wolfe's master-stroke. His men embarked in boats from the warshipslying some miles above Quebec, dropped silently down the river, closeto the north shore, made sentries believe that they were French boatscarrying provisions to the Foulon, landed at the appointed spot, climbed up the cliff, and overpowered the sleeping guard. A little afterdaylight Wolfe had nearly five thousand soldiers, a "thin red line, "busy preparing a strong position on the Plains of Abraham, while thefleet was landing cannon, to be dragged up the steep hill to bombard thefortress on its weakest side. 

Montcalm had spent many anxious days. He had been incessantly on themove, examining for himself over and over again every point, Cap Rouge, Beauport, Montmorency, reviewing the militia of which he felt uncertain, inspecting the artillery, the commissariat, everything that mattered. At three o'clock in the morning of one of these days he wrote toBourlamaque, at Lake Champlain, noting the dark night, the rain, his menawake and dressed in their tents, everyone alert. "I am booted andmy horses are saddled, which is in truth my usual way of spending thenight. I have not undressed since the twenty-third of June. " On theevening of the 12th of September the batteries at Point Levis kept upa furious fire on Quebec. There was much activity on board the Britishwar-ships lying below the town. Boats filled with men rowed towardsBeauport as if to attempt a landing during the night. Here the dangerseemed to lie. At midnight the British boats were still hovering off theshore. The French troops manned the entrenched lines and Montcalm wascontinually anxious. A heavy convoy of provisions was to come down tothe Foulon that night, and orders had been given to the French posts onthe north shore above Quebec to make no noise. The arrival of the convoywas vital, for the army was pressed for food. Montcalm was thereforeanxious for its fate when at break of day he heard firing from theFrench cannon at Samos, above Quebec. Had the provisions then been takenby the English? Near his camp all now seemed quiet. He gave ordersfor the troops to rest, drank some cups of tea with his aide-de-campJohnstone, a Scotch Jacobite, and at about half-past six rode towardsQuebec to the camp of Vaudreuil to learn why the artillery was firingat Samos. Immediately in front of the Governor's house he learned themomentous news. The English were on the Plains of Abraham. Soon he hadthe evidence of his own eyes. On the distant heights across the valleyhe could see the redcoats. 

No doubt Montcalm had often pondered this possibility and had decided insuch a case to attack at once before the enemy could entrench and bringup cannon. A rapid decision was now followed by rapid action. He had amoment's conversation with Vaudreuil. The French regiments on the rightat Vaudreuil's camp, lying nearest to the city, were to march at once. To Johnstone he said, "The affair is serious, " and then gave ordersthat all the French left, except a few men to guard the ravine atMontmorency, should follow quickly to the position between Quebec andthe enemy, a mile away. Off to this point he himself galloped. Already, by orders of officers on the spot, regiments were gathering between thewalls of the city and the British. The regiments on the French right atBeauport were soon on the move towards the battlefield, but two thousandof the best troops still lay inactive beyond Beauport. Johnstonedeclares that Vaudreuil countermanded the order of Montcalm for thesetroops to come to his support and ordered that not one of them shouldbudge. There was haste everywhere. By half-past nine Montcalm had somefour thousand men drawn up between the British and the walls of Quebec. He hoped that Bougainville, advancing from Cap Rouge, would be able toassail the British rear: "Surely Bougainville understands that I mustattack. "

The crisis was, over in fifteen minutes. Montcalm attacked at once. His line was disorderly. His center was composed of regular troops, hiswings of Canadians and Indians. These fired irregularly and lay down toreload, thus causing confusion. The French moved forward rapidly; theBritish were coming on more slowly. The French were only some fortyyards away when there was an answering fire from the thin red line; forWolfe had ordered his men to put two balls in their muskets and to holdtheir fire for one dread volley. Then the roar from Wolfe's center waslike that of a burst of artillery; and, when the smoke cleared, theFrench battalions were seen breaking in disorder from the shock, thefront line cut down by the terrible fire. A bayonet charge from theredcoats followed. Some five thousand trained British regulars boredown, working great slaughter on four thousand French, many of themcolonials who had never before fought in the open. The rout of theFrench was complete. Some fled to safety behind the walls of Quebec, others down the Cote Ste. Genevieve and across the St. Charles River, where they stopped pursuit by cutting the bridge. Both Wolfe andMontcalm were mortally wounded after the issue of the day was reallydecided, and both survived to be certain, the one of victory, the otherof defeat. Wolfe died on the field of battle. Montcalm was taken into ahouse in Quebec and died early the next morning. It is perhaps the onlyincident in history of a decisive battle of world import followed by thedeath of both leaders, each made immortal by the tragedy of their commonfate. 

At two o'clock in the afternoon of the day of defeat, Vaudreuil helda tumultuous council of war. It was decided to abandon Quebec, whereMontcalm lay dying and to retreat up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, tothe defense of which Levis had been sent before the fight. That nightthe whole French army fled in panic, leaving their tents standing andabandoning quantities of stores. Vaudreuil who had talked so bravelyabout death in the ruins of Canada, rather than surrender, gave ordersto Ramezay, commanding in Quebec, to make terms and haul down his flag. On the third day after the battle, the surrender was arranged. On thefourth day the British marched into Quebec, where ever since their flaghas floated. 

Meanwhile, Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British armies inAmerica, was making a toilsome advance towards Montreal by way of LakeChamplain. He had occupied both Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which hadbeen abandoned by the French. Across his path lay Bourlamaque at Isleaux Noix. Another British army, having captured Niagara, was advancingon Montreal down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Amherst, however, made little progress this year in his menace to Montreal and soon wentinto winter quarters, as did the other forces elsewhere. The Britishvictory therefore was as yet incomplete. 

The year 1759 proved dire for France. She was held fast by her treatywith Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troopsto help Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle hadwritten to Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to beinvaded and London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right. It was not done. France could not parry Pitt's blows. In Africa, in theWest Indies, in India, the British won successes which meant the ruin ofFrench power in three continents. French admirals like Conflans and LaClue were no match for Boscawen, Hawke, and Rodney, all seamen of thefirst rank, and made the stronger because dominated by the fiery Pitt. 

They kept the French squadrons shut up in their own ports. When, atlast, on November 20, 1759, Conflans came out of Brest and fought Hawkeat Quiberon Bay, the French fleet was nearly destroyed, and the dream oftaking London ended in complete disaster. 

CHAPTER XI. The Fall Of Canada

Though Quebec was in their hands, the position of the British during thewinter of 1759-60 was dangerous. In October General Murray, who wasleft in command, saw with misgiving the great fleet sail away which hadbrought to Canada the conquering force of Wolfe and Saunders. Murray wasleft with some seven thousand men in the heart of a hostile country, andwith a resourceful enemy, still unconquered, preparing to attack him. He was separated from other British forces by vast wastes of forestand river, and until spring should come no fleet could aid him. Threeenemies of the English, the French said exultingly, would aid to retakeQuebec: the ruthless savages who haunted the outskirts of the fortressand massacred many an incautious straggler; the French army which couldbe recruited from the Canadian population; and, above all, the bittercold of the Canadian winter. To Murray, as to Napoleon long afterwardin his rash invasion of Russia, General February was indeed the enemy. About the two or three British ships left at Quebec the ice froze inplaces a dozen feet thick, and snowdrifts were piled so high against thewalls of Quebec that it looked sometimes as if the enemy might walk overthem into the fortress. So solidly frozen was the surface of the riverthat Murray sent cannon to the south shore across the ice to repela menace from that quarter. There was scarcity of firewood and ofprovisions. Scurvy broke out in the garrison. Many hundreds died so thatby the spring Murray had barely three thousand men fit for active duty. 

Throughout the winter Levis, now in command of the French forces, made increasing preparations to destroy Murray in the spring. Theheadquarters of Uvis were at Montreal. Here Vaudreuil, the Governor, kept his little court. He and Levis worked harmoniously, for Uvis wasconciliatory and tactful. For a time Vaudreuil treasured the thoughtof taking command in person to attack Quebec. In the end, however, heshowed that he had learned something from the disasters of the previousyear and did not interfere with the plans made by Levis. So throughoutthe winter Montreal had its gayeties and vanities as of old. There werefeasts and dances--but over all brooded the reality of famine in thepresent and--the foreboding of disaster to come. 

By April 20, 1760, the St. Lawrence was open and, though the shores werecumbered with masses of broken ice, the central channel was free for theboats which Levis filled with his soldiers. It was a bleak experience todescend the turbulent river between banks clogged with ice. When Leviswas not far from Quebec, he learned that it was impossible to surpriseMurray who was well on guard between Cap Rouge on the west and Beauporton the east. The one thing to do was to reach the Plains of Abraham inorder to attack the feeble walls of Quebec from the landward side. SinceMurray's alertness made impossible attack by way of the high cliffswhich Wolfe had climbed in the night, Levis had to reach Quebec by acircuitous route. He landed his army a little above Cap Rouge, marchedinland over terrible roads in heavy rain, and climbed to the plateau ofQuebec from the rear at Sainte Foy. On April 27, 1760, he drew up hisarmy on the heights almost exactly as Wolfe had done in the previousSeptember. Murray followed the example of Montcalm. He had no trust inthe feeble defenses of Quebec and on the 28th marched out to fight onthe open plain. The battle of Sainte Foy followed exactly the precedentsof the previous year. The defenders of Quebec were driven off the fieldin overwhelming defeat. The difference was that Murray took his armyback to Quebec and from behind its walls still defied his Frenchassailant. Levis had poor artillery, but he did what he could. Heentrenched and poured his fire into Quebec. In the end it was sea powerwhich balked him. On the 15th of May, when a British fleet appearedround the head of the Island of Orleans, Levis withdrew in somethinglike panic and Quebec was safe. 

Levis returned to Montreal; and to this point all the forces of Franceslowly retreated as they were pressed in by the overwhelming numbers ofthe British. At Oswego, the scene of Montcalm's first brilliant successfour years earlier, Amherst had gathered during the summer of 1760 anarmy of about ten thousand men. From here he descended the St. Lawrencein boats to attack Montreal from the west. From the south, down LakeChamplain and the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence, came anotherBritish force under Haviland also to attack Montreal. At Quebec Murrayput his army on transports, left the city almost destitute of defense, and thus brought a third considerable force against Montreal. There waslittle fighting. The French withdrew to the common objective as theirenemy advanced. Early in September Levis had gathered at Montreal allhis available force, amounting now to scarcely more than two thousandmen, for Canadians and Indians alike had deserted him. The Britishpressed in with the slow and inevitable rigor of a force of nature. Onthe 7th of September their united army was before the town and Amherstdemanded instant surrender. The only thing for Vaudreuil to do was tomake the best terms possible. On the next day he signed a capitulationwhich protected the liberties in property and religion of the Canadiansbut which yielded the whole of Canada to Great Britain. The struggle forNorth America had ended. 

In the moment of triumph Amherst inflicted on the French army a deephumiliation to punish the outrages committed by their Indian allies. Inthe early days of the war Loudoun, the Commander-in-Chief in America, had vowed that the British would make the French "sick of such inhumanvillainy" and teach them to respect "the laws of nature and humanity. "Washington speaks of his "deadly sorrow" at the dreadful outrages whichhe saw, the ravishing of women, the scalping alive even of children. Philadelphians had seen the grim spectacle of a wagon-load of corpsesbrought by mourning friends and relatives of the dead and laid down atthe door of the Assembly to show to pacifist legislators what was reallyhappening. The French regular officers, as we have seen, had hated thiskind of warfare Bougainville says that his soul shuddered at the sightsin Montreal, where the whole town turned out to see an English prisonerkilled, boiled, and eaten by the savages. Worse still, captive motherswere obliged to eat the flesh of their own children. The French believedthat they could not get on without the savage allies who committed theseoutrages, and they were not strong enough to coerce them. Amherst, onthe other hand, held his Indians in check and rebuked outrage. Nowhe was stern to punish what the French had permitted. He could writeproudly to a friend that the French were amazed at the order in which hekept his own Indians. Not a man, woman, or child, he said, had been hurtor a single atrocity committed. It was a vivid contrast with what hadtaken place after the British surrender to Montcalm at Fort WilliamHenry. The day of retribution had come. Because of such outrages, theFrench army was denied the honors of war usually conceded to a brave anddefeated foe. The French officers and men must not, Amherst insisted, serve again during the war. Levis protested and begged Vaudreuil to beallowed to go on fighting rather than accept the terms, but in vain. Thehumiliation was rigorously imposed, and it was a sullen host which theBritish took captive. 

France had lost an Empire. It was nearly three years still before peacewas signed at Paris in 1763. To Britain France yielded everythingeast of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and to Spain she cededNew Orleans and everything else to which she had any claim. Thefleurs-de-lis floated still over only two tiny fishing islands offthe Newfoundland shore. All the glowing plans of France's leaders--ofRichelieu, of Louis XIV, of Colbert, of Frontenac, of the heroicmissionaries of the Jesuit Order--seemed to have come to nothing. 

The fall of France did much to drag down her rival. Already was Americarestless under control from Europe. There was now no danger to theEnglish in America from the French peril which had made insecure theborders of Massachusetts, of New York, of Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and had brought widespread desolation and sorrow. With the removal ofthe menace went the need of help and defenses for the colonies from themotherland. The French belief that there was a natural antipathy betweenthe English of the Old World and the English of the New was, in reality, based on the fact of a likeness so great that neither would acceptcontrol or patronage from the other. Towards the Englishman who assumedairs of superiority the antagonism of the colonists was always certainto be acute. Open strife came when the assumption of superiority tookthe form of levying taxes on the colonies without asking their leave. In no remote way the fall of French Canada, by removing a near menaceto the English colonies, led to this new conflict and to the collapseof that older British Empire which had sprung from the England of theStuarts. 

When Montreal fell there were in the St. Lawrence many British shipswhich had been used for troops and supplies. Before the end of Septemberthe French soldiers and also the officials from France who desired to gohome were on board these ships bound for Europe. By the end of Novembermost of the exiles had reached home. Varying receptions awaited them. Levis, who took back the army, was soon again, by consent of the Britishgovernment, in active service. Fortune smiled on him to the end. He dieda great noble and Marshal of France just before the Revolution of 1789;but in that awful upheaval his widow and his two daughters perishedon the scaffold. Vaudreuil's shallow and vain incompetence did not gounpunished. He was put on trial, accused of a share in the black fraudswhich had helped to ruin Canada. The trial was his punishment. Hewas acquitted of taking any share of the plunder and so drops out ofhistory. Bigot and his gang, on the other hand, were found guilty ofvast depredations. The former Intendant was for a time in the Bastilleand in the end was banished from France, after being forced to repaygreat sums. We find echoes of the luxury of Quebec in the sale in Franceof the rich plate which the rascal had acquired. There were, however, other and even worse plunderers. They were tried and condemned chieflyto return what they had stolen. We rather wonder that no expiatorysacrifice on the scaffold was required of any of these knaves. LallyTollendal, who, as the French leader in India, had only failed and notplundered, was sent to a cruel execution. 

Under the terms of the surrender and of the final Treaty of Peace in1763, civilians in Canada were given leave to return to France. Nearlythe whole of the official class and many of the large landowners, theseigneurs, left the country. In Canada there remained a priesthood, largely native, but soon to be recruited from France by the upheavalof the Revolution, a few seigneurial families, natural leaders of theirrace, a peasantry, exhausted by the long war but clinging tenaciously tothe soil, and a good many hardy pioneers of the forest, men skilled inhunting and in the use of the axe. Out of these elements, amountingin 1763 to little more than sixty thousand people, has come thatFrench-Canadian race in America now numbering perhaps three millions. The race has scattered far. It is found in the mills of Massachusetts, in the canebrakes of Louisiana, on the wide stretches of the prairie ofthe Canadian West, but it has always kept intact its strong citadelon the banks of the St. Lawrence. New France was, in reality, widelyseparated in spirit from old France, before the new master in Canadamade the division permanent. The imagination of the Canadian peasant didnot wander across the ocean to France. He knew only the scenes about hisown hearth and in them alone were his thought and affections centered. 

The one wider interest which the habitant treasured was love for theCatholic Church of his fathers and of his own spiritual hopes. Itthus happened that when France in revolution assailed and for a timeoverthrew the Church within her borders, the heart of French Canada wasnot with France but with the persecuted Church; she hated the spirit ofrevolutionary France. Te Deums were sung at Quebec in thanksgiving forthe defeats of Napoleon. In language and what literary culture theypossessed, in traditions and tastes, the conquered people remainedFrench, but they had no allegiance divided between Canada and France. To this day they are proud to be simply Canadians, rooted in the soilof Canada, with no debt of patriotic gratitude to the France from whichthey sprang or to the Britain which obtained political dominance overtheir ancestors after a long agony of war. To the British Crown many ofthem feel a certain attachment because of the liberty guaranteed to themto pursue their own ideals of happiness. In preserving their typeof social life, their faith and language, they have shown a resolutetenacity. To this day they are as different in these things from theirfellow-citizens of British origin in the rest of Canada as were theirancestors from the English colonies which lay on their borders. 

The French in Canada are still a separate people. From time to timea nervous fear seizes them lest too many of their race may be lost totheir old ideals in the Anglo-Saxon world surging about them. Then theylisten readily to appeals to their racial unity and draw more sharplythan ever the lines of division between themselves and the rest of NorthAmerica. They remain a fragment of an older France, remote and isolated, still dreaming dreams like those of Frontenac of old of the dominance oftheir race in North America and asserting passionately their rights inthe soil of Canada to which, first of Europeans, they came. At the mouthof the Mississippi in the Louisiana founded by Louis XIV, along the St. Lawrence in the Canada of Champlain and Frontenac, with a resolutionmore than half pathetic, and in a world that gives little heed, men ofFrench race are still on guard to preserve in America the lineaments ofthat older France, long since decayed in Europe, which was above all theeldest daughter of the Church. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

While the present narrative is based for the most part on more reconditeand widely scattered sources, the most accessible volumes relating tothe period are the following works of Francis Parkman (Boston: manyeditions): "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, Frontenac andNew France under Louis XIV, A Half Century of Conflict" (2 vols. ), and"Montcalm and Wolfe" (2 vols. ). To these should be added, as completingthe story, George M. Wrong, "The Fall of Canada" (Oxford, 1914) whichdwells in detail on the last year of the struggle. All these volumescontain adequate references to authorities. The last of Parkman's workswas published more than twenty-five years ago and later research hasrevised some of his conclusions, but he still commands great authority. In "The Chronicles of Canada" (Toronto, 191316) half a dozen volumesrelate to the period; each of these volumes, which embody later researchand are written in an attractive style, contains a bibliography relatingto its special subject: C. W. Colby, "The Fighting Governor" [Frontenac];Agnes C. Laut, "The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay"; Lawrence J. Burpee, "The Pathfinders of the Great Plains"; Arthur G. Doughty, "TheAcadian Exiles"; William Wood, "The Great Fortress" [Louisbourg], "The Passing of New France", and "The Winning of Canada. " Lawrence J. Burpee's "Search for the Western Sea" (Toronto, 1908) deals with thework of La Verendrye and other explorers. Anthony Hendry's "Journal" ispublished in the "Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, " seriesiii, volume i. The latest phase of the discussions on La Verendrye arereviewed in an article by Doane Robinson in "The Mississippi ValleyHistorical Review" for December, 1916. The material relating to thediscoverer was long scattered, but it has now been collected in avolume, edited by Lawrence J. Burpee for the Champlain Society, Toronto, but owing to the war it is at the present date (1918) stillin manuscript. Much of what is contained in Mr. Burpee's volume willbe found in "South Dakota Historical Collections, " volume vii, 1914(Pierre, S. D. ). 

Additional references are given in the bibliographies appended to thearticles on "Chatham, Seven Years' War, " and "Nova Scotia" in "TheEncyclopaedia Britannica, " 11th Edition.