History of the United States Volume I Part 20

[Ill.u.s.tration: Montcalm.]

From this moment all changes. William Pitt, subsequently Lord Chatham, now became the soul of the British ministry. George III. had dismissed him therefrom in 1757, but Newcastle found it impossible to get on without him. The great commoner had to be recalled, this time to take entire direction of the war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: William Pitt.]

[1758]

Pitt had set his mind on the conquest of Canada. He superseded Loudon early in 1758 by General Amherst, who was seconded by Wolfe and by Admiral Boscawen, both with large re-enforcements. They were to reduce Louisburg. It was an innovation to a.s.sign important commands like these to men with so little fame and influence, but Pitt did not care. He believed his appointees to be brave, energetic, skilful, and the event proved his wisdom. Louisburg fell, and with it the whole of Cape Breton Island and also Prince Edward.

Unfortunately General Abercrombie had not been recalled with Loudon. The same year, 1758, he signally failed to capture Ticonderoga, leaving the way to Montreal worse blocked than before. Fort Du Quesne, however, General Forbes took this year at little cost, rechristening it Pittsburgh in honor of the heroic minister who had ordered the enterprise.

[1759]

In the year 1759 occurred a grand triple movement upon Canada. Amherst, now general-in-chief, was to clear the Champlain Valley, and Prideaux with large colonial forces to reduce Fort Niagara. Both had orders, being successful in these initial attacks, to move down the St. Lawrence and unite with Wolfe, who was to sail up that river and beset Quebec.

Prideaux was splendidly successful, as indeed was Amherst in time, though longer than he antic.i.p.ated in securing Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Wolfe.]

Meantime Wolfe at Quebec was trying in all ways to manoeuvre the crafty Montcalm out of his impregnable works. Failing, he in his eagerness suffered himself to attempt an a.s.sault upon the city, which proved not only vain but terribly costly. A weaker commander would now have given up, but Wolfe had red hair, and the grit usually accompanying.

Undaunted, he planned the hazardous enterprise of rowing up the St.

Lawrence by night, landing with five thousand picked men at the foot of the precipitous ascent to the Plains of Abraham, and scaling those heights to face Montcalm from the west. The Frenchman, stunned at the sight which day brought him, lost no time in attacking. In the hot battle which ensued, September 13, 1759, both commanders fell, Wolfe cheering his heroes to sure victory, Montcalm urging on his forlorn hope in vain. The English remained masters of the field and in five days Quebec capitulated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Landing of Wolfe.]

[1760-1763]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quebec in 1730--From an old Print.]

Vaudreuil, the French commander at Montreal, sought to dislodge the English ere the ice left the river in the spring of 1760, and succeeded in driving them within their works. Each side then waited and hoped for help from beyond sea so soon as navigation opened. It came the earlier to the English, who were gladdened on May 11th by the approach of a British frigate, the forerunner of a fleet. They now chased Vaudreuil back into Montreal, where they were met by Haviland from Crown Point and by Amherst from Oswego. France's days of power in America were ended.

Her fleet of twenty-two sail intended for succor met total destruction in the Bay des Chaleurs and by the Peace of Paris, 1763, she surrendered to her victorious antagonist every foot of her American territory east of the Mississippi, save the city of New Orleans.

The Indians were thus left to finish this war alone. Pontiac, the brave and cunning chief of the Ottawas, aghast at the rising might of the English, and the certain fate of his race without the French for helpers, organized a conspiracy including nearly every tribe this side the Mississippi except the Six Nations, to put to the sword all the English garrisons in the West. Fatal success waited upon the plan. It was in 1763 Forts Sandusky, St. Joseph (southeast of Lake Michigan), Miami (Fort Wayne), Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.), Le Boeuf, Venango, and Pittsburgh were attacked and all but the last destroyed, soldiers and settlers murdered with indescribable barbarities. Pittsburgh held out till re-enforced, at dreadful cost in blood, by Colonel Bouquet and his Highlanders, who marched from Philadelphia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bouquet's Redoubt at Pittsburgh.]

The hottest and longest conflict was at Detroit, Major Gladwyn commanding, where Pontiac himself led the onset, heading perhaps a thousand men. The siege was maintained with fearful venom from May 11th till into October. The English tried a number of sallies, brave, fatal, vain, and were so hard pressed by their bloodthirsty foe that only timely and repeated re-enforcements saved them. At last the savages, becoming, as always, disunited and straitened for supplies, sullenly made peace; and at the call of the rich and now free Northwest, caravans of English immigrants thronged thither to lay under happiest auspices the foundations of new States.

END OF VOLUME l.