Montcalm At Quebec
The rejoicing in Canada was brief.Before the end of the year the British were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the long battle-line.Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November.Fort Frontenac--giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, the West--had surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm's victory at Ticonderoga.The Ohio was gone.The great fortress guarding the gateway to the Gulf was gone.The next English attack would fall on Quebec.Montcalm had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorous precision, that the period of petty warfare, for taking scalps and burning houses, was past.It was time now to defend the main trunk of the tree and not the outer branches.The best Canadians should be incorporated into and trained in the battalions of regulars.The militia regiments themselves should be clothed and drilled like regular soldiers.Interior posts, such as Detroit, should be held by the smallest possible number of men.This counsel enraged Vaudreuil.Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything.
Vaudreuil was certain that the English would not attack Quebec.
There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm.He was fighting against fearful odds.With only about three thousand trained regulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages, he was confronting Britain's might on sea and land which was now thrown against New France.From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothing to hope.In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles.That brilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the British fleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied and resourceful attempts to secure aid for Canada.He saw ministers.
He procured the aid of powerful connections of his own and of his fellow-officers in Canada.He went to what was at this time the fountainhead of authority at the French court, and it was not the King."The King is nothing," wrote Bougainville, "the Marchioness is all-powerful--prime minister." Bougainville saw the Marchioness, Madame de Pompadour, and read to her some of Montcalm's letters.She showed no surprise and said nothing--her habit, as Bougainville said.By this time the name of Montcalm was one to charm with in France.Bougainville wrote to him "Ishould have to include all France if I should attempt to give a 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 the court thought the recall of Montcalm would be wise in the interests of New France.Now it was Montcalm's day and the desire to help him was real.France, however, could do little.
Ministers were courteous and sympathetic; but as Berryer, Minister of Marine, said to Bougainville, with the house on fire in France, they could not take much thought of the stable in Canada.
This Berryer was an inept person.He was blindly ignorant of naval affairs, coarse, obstinate, a placeman who owed his position to intrigue and favoritism.His only merit was that he tried to cut down expenditure, but in regard to the navy this policy was likely to be fatal.It is useless, said this guardian of France's marine, to try to rival Britain on the sea, and the wise thing to do is to save money by not spending it on ships.
Berryer even sold to private persons stores which he had on hand for the use of the fleet.If the house was on fire he did not intend, it would seem, that much should be left to burn.The old Due de Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was of another type, a fine and efficient soldier.He explained the situation frankly in a letter to Montcalm.Austria was an exigent ally, and Frederick of Prussia a dangerous foe.France had to concentrate her strength in Europe.The British fleet, he admitted, paralyzed efforts overseas.There was no certainty, or even probability, that troops and supplies sent from France would ever reach Canada.
France, the Duke said guardedly, was not without resources.She had a plan to strike a deadly blow against England and, in doing so, would save Canada without sending overseas a great army.The plan was nothing less than the invasion of England and Scotland with a great force, the enterprise which, nearly half a century later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke against the proud maritime state.During that winter and spring France was building a great number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent and to land an army in England.
If this plan succeeded, all else would succeed.Montcalm must just hold on, conduct a defensive campaign and, above all, retain some part of Canada since, as the Duke said with prophetic foresight, if the British once held the whole of the country they would never give it up.Montcalm himself had laid before the court a plan of his own.He estimated that the British would have six men to his one.Rather than surrender to them, he would withdraw to the far interior and take his army by way of the Ohio to Louisiana.The design was a wild counsel of despair for he would be cut off from any base of supplies, but it shows the risks he was ready to tale.In him now the court had complete confidence.Vaudreuil was instructed to take no military action without seeking the counsel of Montcalm."The King," wrote Belle-Isle to Montcalm, "relies upon your zeal, your courage and your resolution." Some little help was sent.The British control of the sea was not complete; since more than twenty French ships eluded British vigilance, bringing military stores, food (for Canada was confronted by famine), four hundred soldiers, and Bougainville himself, with a list of honors for the leaders in Canada.Montcalm was given the rank of Lieutenant-General and, but for a technical difficulty, would have been made a Marshal of France.
