Canada: the Empire of the North Part 20

Rangers, too, are a story by themselves, but a story which does not concern Canada. Skating and snowshoeing by winter, canoeing by night in summer, Rogers pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the enemy's lines times without number, as if his life were charmed, though once his wrist was shot when he had nothing to stanch the blood but the ribbon tying his wig, and once he stumbled back exhausted to Fort William Henry, to lie raging with smallpox for the winter. Among the forest rangers of New Hamps.h.i.+re and New York, Major Robert Rogers was without a peer. No danger was too great, no feat too daring, for his band of scouts. The English have established Fort William Henry at the south end of Lake George. The French checkmate the move by strengthening Crown Point on Lake Champlain and moving a pace farther south into English territory,--to Carillon, where the waters of Lake George pour into Champlain. Here on a high angle between the river and the lake, commanding all travel north and south, the French build Carillon or Fort Ticonderoga.

{243} As for the Great Northwest, New France with her string of posts--Frontenac, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, Kaministiquia (Fort William), Fort Rogue (Winnipeg), Portage la Prairie--stretches clear across to the foothills of the Rockies. The English fur traders of Hudson Bay have, in 1754, sent Anthony Hendry up the Saskatchewan, but when Hendry comes back with word of equestrian Indians--the Blackfeet on horseback--and treeless plains, the English set him down as a lying impostor. Indians on horseback! They had never seen Indians but in canoes and on snowshoes! Hendry was dismissed as unreliable, and no Englishman went up the Saskatchewan for another ten years.

If the disasters of 1755 did nothing more, they at last stirred the home governments to action. Earl Loudon is sent out in 1756 to command the English, and to New France in May comes Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, age forty-four, soldier, scholar, country gentleman, with a staff composed of Chevalier de Levis, Bourlamaque, and one Bougainville, to become famous as a navigator.

Though New France consists of a good three quarters of America, things are in evil plight that causes Montcalm many sleepless nights.

Vaudreuil, the French governor, descendant of that Vaudreuil who long ago set the curse of Indian warfare on the borders of New England, had expected to be appointed chief commander of the troops and jealously resents Montcalm's coming. With the Governor is leagued Intendant Bigot, come up from Louisburg. Bigot is a man of sixty, of n.o.ble birth, a favorite of the b.u.t.terfly woman who rules the King of France,--the Pompadour,--and he has come to New France to mend his fortunes. How he planned to do it one may guess from his career at Louisburg; but Quebec offered better field, and it was to Bigot's interest to ply Montcalm and Vaudreuil with such t.i.ttle-tattle of enmity as would foment jealousy, keep their attention on each other, and their eyes off his own doings. As he had done at Louisburg, so he now did at Quebec. The King was requisitioned for enormous sums to strengthen the fort. Bigot's {244} ring of friends acted as contractors. The outlay was enormous, the results trifling. "I think," complained the King, "that Quebec must be fortified in gold, it has cost so much." It was time of war. Enormous sums were to be expended for presents to keep the Indians loyal; and the King complains that he cannot understand how baubles of beads and powderhorns cost so much, or how the western tribes seem to become more and more numerous, or how the French officers, who distribute the presents, become millionaires in a few years. A friend of Bigot's handled these funds.

There are meat contracts for the army. A worthless, lowbred scamp is named commissary general. He handles these contracts, and he, too, swiftly graduates into the millionaire cla.s.s, is hail-fellow well met with Bigot, drinks deep at the Intendant's table, and gambles away as much as $40,000 in a single night. It is time of war, and it is time of famine too; for the crops have failed. Every inhabitant between the ages of fifteen and fifty has been drafted into the army. Not counting Indians, there is an army of fifteen to twenty thousand to be fed; so Bigot compels the habitants to sell him provisions at a low price.

These provisions he resells to the King for the army and to the citizens at famine prices. The King's warehouse down by the Intendant's palace becomes known as La Friponne,--The Cheat.

And though the country is on verge of ruin, though poor people of the three towns are rioting in the streets for food, old women cursing the little wizened Intendant with his pimpled face as he rolls past resplendent in carriage with horses whose harness is a blaze of silver, the troops threatening to mutiny because they are compelled to use horse flesh,--though New France is hovering over a volcano of disaster, they dance to their death, thoughtless as b.u.t.terflies, gay as children, these manikin imitators of the French court, who are ruining New France that they may copy the vices of an Old World playing at kingcraft. The regular troops are uniformed in white with facings of blue and red and gold and violet, three-cornered hat, and leather leggings to knee.

What with chapel bells ringing and ringing, and bugle {245} call and counter call echoing back from Cape Diamond; what with Monsieur Bigot's prancing horses and Madame Pean's flashy carriage,--Madame Pean of whom Bigot is so enamored he has sent her husband to some far western post and pa.s.ses each evening at her gay receptions,--what with the grounding of the sentry's arms and the parade of troops, Quebec is a gay place these years of black ruin, and the gossips have all they can do to keep track of the amours and the duels and the high personages cultivating Madame Pean; for cultivated she must be by all who covet place or power. A word from Madame Pean to Bigot is of more value than a bribe.

Even Montcalm and De Levis attend her revels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF CHaTEAU BIGOT]

Twenty people sup with Monsieur Bigot each night, either at the Intendant's palace down by Charles River, or nine miles out towards Beauport, where he has built himself the Forest Hermitage, now known as Chateau Bigot,--a magnificent country manor house of red brick, hidden away among the hills with the gay shrubberies of French gardens set down in an American wilderness. Supper over by seven, the guests sit down to play, and the amount a man may gamble is his social barometer, whether {246} he lose or win, cheat or steal. If dancing follows gambling, the rout will not disperse till seven in the morning. What time is left of the twenty-four hours in a day will be devoted to public affairs.

Montcalm's salary is only 25,000 francs, or $5,000. To maintain the dignity of the King, the commander in chief must keep the pace, and he too gives weekly suppers, with places set for forty people, "whom I don't know," he writes dejectedly to his wife, "and don't want to know; and wish that I might spend the evenings quietly in my own chamber."

To Montcalm, who was of n.o.ble birth with no shamming, this lowbred pretense and play at courtcraft became a bore; to his staff of officers, a source of continual amus.e.m.e.nt; but De Levis presently falls victim to a pair of fine eyes possessed by the wife of another man.

War filled the summers, but the winters were given up to social life; and of all midwinter social gayeties the most important was the official visit of the Governor and the Intendant to Montreal. By this time a good road had been cut from Quebec to Montreal along the north sh.o.r.e, and the sleighs usually set out in January or February. Bigot added to the occasion all the prestige of a social rout. All the grand dames and cavaliers of Quebec were invited. Baggage was sent on ahead with servants to break the way, find quarters for the night, and prepare meals. After a dinner at the Intendant's palace the sleighs set out, two horses to each, driven tandem because the sleigh road was too narrow for a team. Each sleigh held only two occupants, and to the damage done by fair eyes was added the glow of exhilaration from driving behind spirited horses in frosty air with the bells of a hundred carryalls ringing across the snow. At seven was pause for supper. High play followed till ten. Then early to bed and early to rise and on the road again by seven in the morning! In Montreal was one continual round of dinners and dances. Between times, appointments were made to the military posts and trading stations of the Up-Country.

He who wanted a good post must pay his court to Madame Pean. No wonder Montcalm breathed a sigh of relief when Lent put a stop to the gayeties and he could quietly pa.s.s his evenings with the Sulpician priests.

{247} To break from Bigot's ring during the war was impossible.

Creatures of his choosing filled the army, handled the supplies, controlled the Indians; and when the King's reproof became too sharp, Bigot simply threatened to resign, which wrought consternation, for no man of ability would attempt to unwind the tangle of Bigot's dishonesty during a critical war. Montcalm wrote home complaints in cipher. The French government bided its time, and Bigot tightened his vampire suckers on the lifeblood of the dying nation. The whole era is a theme for the allegory of artist or poet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, OTTAWA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: QUEBEC, CHaTEAU FRONTENAC AND THE CITADEL]

Montcalm had arrived in May of 1756. By midsummer he was leading three thousand French artillerymen across Lake Ontario from Fort Frontenac (Kingston), to attack the English post on the south side, Oswego.

Inside the fort walls were seven hundred raw English provincials, ill of scurvy from lack of food. The result need scarcely be told. Seven hundred ill men behind wooden walls had no chance against three thousand soldiers in health with heavy artillery. To take the English by surprise, Montcalm had crossed the lake on August 4 by night. Two days later all the transport s.h.i.+ps had landed the troops and the cannon had actually been mounted before the English knew of the enemy's presence. On the east side of the river was Fort Ontario, a barricade of logs built in the shape of a star, housing an outguard of three hundred and seventy men. On discovering the French, the sentry spiked their cannon, threw their powder in the river, and retired at midnight inside Oswego's walls. Working like beavers, Montcalm's men dragged twenty cannon to a hill commanding the fort, known as "Fort Rascal"

because the outfort there was useless to the English. Before Montcalm's cannonade Oswego's walls, plastered with clay and rubble, fell like the staves of a dry barrel. The English sharpshooters then hid behind pork barrels placed in three tiers filled with sand; but Colonel Mercer, their officer, was literally cut in two by a cannon shot, and the women, cooped up inside the barracks, begged the officers to avoid Indian ma.s.sacre by surrender. {248} A white flag was waved.

Including women, something under a thousand English surrendered themselves prisoners to Montcalm. The Indians fell at once to mad plunder. Spite of the terms of honorable surrender, the English were stripped of everything, and only Montcalm's promise of $10,000 worth of presents to the savages prevented butchery. The victors decamped to Montreal, well pleased with the campaign of 1756. It need not be told that there were constant raids and counter raids along the frontier during the entire year.

Loudon, the English commander, did not arrive in New York till well on in midsummer of 1756, and he found far different material from the trained bushfighters in the hands of Montcalm. The English soldiers were raw provincial recruits, dressed, at best, in buckskin, but for the most part in the rough homespun which they had worn when they had left plow and carpenter's bench and fis.h.i.+ng boat. While Montcalm was capturing Oswego, Loudon was licking his rough recruits into shape, "making men out of mud" for the campaign of 1757. Indeed, it was said of Loudon, and the saying stuck to him as characteristic of his campaign, that he resembled the wooden horse figure of a tavern sign,--always on horseback but never rode forward. Instead of striking at Lake Champlain or on the Ohio, where the French were aggressors, Loudon planned to repeat the brilliant capture of Louisburg. July of 1857 found him at Halifax planting vegetable gardens to prevent scurvy,--"the cabbage campaign" it was derisively called,--and waiting for Gorham's rangers to reconnoiter Louisburg. Gorham's scouts brought back word that the French admiral had come in with twenty-four men-of-war and seven thousand men. To overpower such strength meant a prolonged siege. It was already August. Loudon sailed back to New York without firing a gun, while the English fleet, trying to reconnoiter Louisburg, suffered terrible s.h.i.+pwreck.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EARL OF LOUDON]

Montcalm was not the enemy to let the chance of Loudon's absence from the scene of action pa.s.s unimproved. While Loudon is pottering at Halifax, Montcalm marshals his troops to the {249} number of eight thousand, including one thousand Indians at Carillon or Ticonderoga, where Lake George empties into Lake Champlain. Portaging two hundred and fifty flatboats with as many birch canoes up the river, the French invade the mountain wilderness of Lake George. Towards the end of July, Levis leads part of the troops by land up the west sh.o.r.e towards the English post of Fort William Henry. Montcalm advances on the lake with the flatboats and canoes, and the rafts with the heavy artillery.

Each night Levis' troops kindle their signal fires on the mountain slope, and each night Montcalm from the lake signals back with torches.

It needs artist's brush to paint the picture: the forested mountains green and lonely and silent in the s.h.i.+mmering sunlight of the summer sky; the lake gold as molten metal in the fire of the setting sun; the soldiers in their gay uniforms of white and blue, hoisting tent cloths on oar sweeps for sails as a breeze dimples the waters; the French voyageurs clad in beaded buckskin chanting some ditty of Old-World fame to the rhythmic dip of the Indian paddles; the Indians naked, painted for war, with a glitter in their eyes of a sinister intent which they have no mind to tell Montcalm; and then, at the south of Lake George, nestling between the hills and the water, the little palisaded fort,--Fort William Henry,--with gates fast shut and two thousand bushfighters behind the walls, weak from an epidemic of smallpox, and, as usual, so short of provisions that siege means starvation.

{250} Twenty miles southeastward is another English fort,--Fort Edward,--where General Webb with sixteen hundred men is keeping the road barred against advance to Albany. Soon as scouts bring word to Fort William Henry of the advancing French, Lieutenant Monro sends frantic appeal to Webb for more men; but Webb has already sent all the men he can spare. If he leaves Fort Edward, the French by a flank movement through the woods can march on Albany, so Monro unplugs his seventeen cannon, locks his gates, and bides his fate.

Montcalm follows the same tactics as at Oswego,--brings heavy artillery against slab walls. For the first week of August, eight hundred of his men are digging trenches by night to avoid giving target for the fiery bombs whizzing through the dark from Monro's cannon. By day they lie hidden in the woods with a cordon of sharpshooters encircling the fort, Montcalm encamped on the west to prevent help from Sir William Johnson up the Mohawk, Levis on the southeast to cut off aid from Webb. Monro sends yet one last appeal for help: two thousand men against eight thousand,--the odds are eloquent of his need! Montcalm's scouts let the messenger pa.s.s through the lines as if unseen, but they make a point of catching the return messenger and holding Webb's answer that he cannot come, till their cannon have torn great wounds in the fort walls. Then Bougainville blindfold carries Webb's answer to Monro and demands the surrender of the fort. Monro still has a little ammunition, still hopes against hope that Johnson or Webb or Loudon will come to the rescue, and he keeps his big guns singing over the heads of the French in their trenches till all the cannon have burst but seven, and there are not ten rounds of sh.e.l.ls left. Then Colonel Young, with a foot shot off, rides out on horseback waving a white flag. Three hundred English have been killed, as many again are wounded or ill of smallpox, and to the remaining garrison of sixteen hundred Montcalm promises safe conduct to General Webb at Fort Edward.

Then the English march out. That night--August 9--the vanquished English camp with Montcalm's forces. The Indians, meanwhile, ramping through the fort for plunder, {251} have maddened themselves with traders' rum! Before daybreak they have butchered all the wounded lying in the hospital and cut to pieces the men ill of smallpox,--a crime that brought its own punishment in contagion. Next morning, when the French guard tried to conduct the disarmed English along the trail to Fort Edward, the Indians s.n.a.t.c.hed at the clothing, the haversacks, the tent kit of the marchers. With their swords the French beat back the drunken horde. In answer, the war hatchets were waved over the heads of the cowering women. The march became a panic; the panic, a ma.s.sacre; and for twenty-four hours such bedlam raged as might have put fiends to shame. The frenzied Indians would listen to no argument but blows; and when the English prisoners appealed to the French for protection, the French dared not offend their savage allies by fighting to protect the English victims. "Take to the woods," they warned the men, and the women were quickly huddled back to shelter of the fort.

Of the men, sixty were butchered on the spot and some seven hundred captured to be held for ransom. The remnant of the English soldiers, along with the women, were held till the Indian frenzy had spent itself, then sent to Fort Edward. August 16 a torch was put to the combustibles of the fort ruins, and as the French boats glided out on Lake George for the St. Lawrence, explosion after explosion, flame leaping above flame, proclaimed that of Fort William Henry there would remain naught but ashes and charred ruins and the skeletons of the dead. So closed the campaign of 1857 [Transcriber's note: 1757?]. For three years hand running England had suffered defeat.

The spring of 1758 witnessed a change. The change was the rise to power of a man who mastered circ.u.mstances instead of allowing them to master him. Such men are the milestones of human progress, whether heroes, or quiet toilers unknown to the world. The man was Pitt, the English statesman. Instead of a weak ministry fighting the machinations of France, it was now Pitt versus Pompadour, the English patriot against the light woman who ruled the councils of France.

{252} From fighting weakly on the defensive, England sprang into the position of aggressor all along the line. The French were to be attacked at all points simultaneously, at Louisburg on the east, at Ticonderoga or Carillon on Lake Champlain, at Duquesne on the Ohio, at Frontenac on Lake Ontario, and finally at Quebec itself. London is recalled as commander in chief. Abercrombie succeeds to the position, with the brilliant young soldier, Lord Howe, as right-hand man; but Pitt takes good care that there shall be good chiefs and good right-hand men at _all_ points. The one mistake is Abercrombie,--"Mrs.

Nabby Crombie" the soldiers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man; and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt trusted to the excellence of the subordinate officers, especially Lord Howe.

Louisburg first!

No more dillydallying and delay "to plant cabbages!" The thing is to reach Louisburg before the French have entered the harbor. Men-of-war are stationed to intercept the French vessels coming from the Mediterranean, and before winter has pa.s.sed Admiral Boscawen has sailed for America with one hundred and fifty vessels, including forty men-of-war, frigates, and transports carrying twelve thousand men.

General Amherst is to command the land forces, and with Amherst is Brigadier James Wolfe, age thirty-one, a tall, slim, fragile man, whose delicate frame is tenanted by a lion spirit; or, to change the comparison, by a motive power too strong for the weak body that held it. By May the fleet is in Halifax. By June Amherst has joined Boscawen, and the s.h.i.+ps beat out for Louisburg through heavy fog, with a sea that boils over the reefs in angry surf.

Louisburg was in worse condition than during the siege of 1745. The broken walls have been repaired, but the filling is false,--sand grit.

Its population is some four thousand, of whom three thousand eight hundred are the garrison. On the s.h.i.+ps lying in the harbor are three thousand marines, a defensive force, in all, {253} of six thousand eight hundred. On walls and in bastions are some four hundred and fifty heavy guns, cannon, and mortars. Imagine a triangle with the base to the west, the two sides running out to sea on the east. The fort is at the apex. The wall of the base line is protected by a marsh. On the northeast side is the harbor protected by reefs and three batteries. Along the south side, Drucourt, the French commander, has stationed two thousand men at three different points where landing is possible, to construct batteries behind barricades of logs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOSCAWEN]

Fog had concealed the approach of the English, but such a ground swell was raging over the reefs as threatened any s.h.i.+p with instant destruction. For a week Amherst and Wolfe and Lawrence row up and down through the roiling mist and raging surf and singing winds to take stock of the situation. With those batteries at the landing places there is only one thing to do,--cannonade them, hold their attention in a life-and-death fight while the English soldiers scramble through the surf for the sh.o.r.e. From sunrise to sundown of the 8th furious cannonading set the green seas churning and tore up the French barricades as by hurricane. At sunset the firing ceased, and three detachments of troops launched out in whaleboats at three in the morning, two of the detachments to make a feint of landing, while Wolfe with the other division was to run through the surf for the sh.o.r.e at Freshwater Cove. The French were not deceived. They let Wolfe approach within range, when the log barricade flashed to flame with a thousand sharpshooters. Wolfe had foreseen the snare and had waved his {254} troops off when he noticed that two boat loads were rowing ash.o.r.e through a tremendous surf under shelter of a rocky point. Quickly he signaled the other boats to follow. In a trice the boats had smashed to kindling on the reefs, but the men were wading ash.o.r.e, muskets held high over head, powder pouches in teeth, and rushed with bayonets leveled against the French, who had dashed from cover to prevent the landing. This unexpected landing had cut the French off from Louisburg. Retreating in panic, they abandoned their batteries and fifty dead. The English had lost one hundred and nine in the surf. It is said that Wolfe scrambled from the water like a drowned rat and led the rush with no other weapon in hand but his cane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SIEGE OF LOUISBURG (From a contemporary print)]

To land the guns through the jostling sea was the next task. It was done, as in 1745, by a pontoon bridge of small boats, but the work took till the 29th of June. Wolfe, meanwhile, has marched with twelve hundred men round to the rear of the marsh and comes so suddenly on the Grand and Lighthouse Batteries, which defend the harbor, that the French abandon them to retreat within the walls. This gives the English such control of the harbor entrance that Drucourt, the French commander, sinks six of his s.h.i.+ps across the channel to bar out Boscawen's fleet, the masts of the sunken, vessels sticking above the water. Amherst's men are working like demons, building a road for the cannon across the marsh and trenching up to the back wall; but they work only at night and are undiscovered by the French till the 9th of July. Then the French rush out with a whoop to drive them off, but the English already have their guns mounted, and Drucourt's men are glad to dash for shelter behind the cracking walls. It now became a game of cannon play pure and simple. Boscawen from harbor front hurls his whistling bombs overhead, to crash through roofs inside the walls.

Wolfe from the Lighthouse Battery throws sh.e.l.ls and flaming combustibles straight into the midst of the remaining French fleet. At last, on July 21st, masts, sails, tar ropes, take fire in a terrible conflagration, and three of the fleet burn to the water line with terrific explosions of their powder magazines; then the flames hiss out above {255} the rocking hulls. Only two s.h.i.+ps are left to the French, and the deep bomb-proof casemates inside the fort between outer and inner walls, where the families and the wounded have been sheltered, are now in flame. Amherst loads his sh.e.l.ls with combustibles and pours one continuous rain of fiery death on the doomed fort. The houses, which are of logs, flame like kindling wood, and now the timber work of the stone bastions is burning from bombs hurtling through the roofs.

The walls crash down in ma.s.ses. The scared surgeons, all b.l.o.o.d.y from amputating shattered limbs, no longer stand in safety above their operating tables. It is said that Madame Drucourt, the Governor's wife, actually stayed on the walls to encourage the soldiers, with her own hands fired some of the great guns, and, when the overworked surgeons flagged from terror and lack of sleep, it was Madame Drucourt who attended to the wounded. Drucourt is for holding out to the death, until one dark night the English row into the harbor and capture his two last s.h.i.+ps. Then Drucourt asks for terms, July 26; but the terms are stern,--utter surrender,--and Drucourt would have fought till every man fell from the walls, had not one of the civil officers rushed after the commander's messenger carrying {256} the refusal, and shouted across the ditches to the English: "We accept! We surrender! We accept your terms!"

Counting soldiers, marines, and townspeople, in all five thousand French pa.s.s over to Amherst, to be carried prisoners on Boscawen's fleet to England. Wolfe was for proceeding at once to Quebec, but Amherst considered the season too late and determined to complete the work where he was. One detachment goes to receive the surrender of Isle St. John, henceforth known as Prince Edward Island. Another division proceeds up St. John River, New Brunswick, burning all settlements that refuse unconditional surrender. Wolfe's grenadiers are sent to reduce Gaspe and Miramichi and northern New Brunswick. And now, lest blundering statecraft for a second time return the captured fort to France, Amherst and Boscawen order the complete disarmament and destruction of Louisburg. What cannon cannot be removed are tumbled into the marsh or upset into the sea. The stones from the walls are carried away to Halifax. By 1760, of Louisburg, the glory of New France, the pride of America, there remains not a vestige but gra.s.sed slopes overgrown by nettles, ditches with rank growth of weeds, stone piles where the wild vines grow, and an inner yard where the cows of the fisher folk pasture.

Not a poor beginning for the campaign of 1758, though bad enough news has come from Major General Abercrombie, which was the real explanation of Amherst's refusal to push on to Quebec.

Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand men, the pick of the regulars and provincials, had launched out on Lake George on the 5th of July with over one thousand boats, to descend the lake northward to the French fort of Carillon or Ticonderoga. Again, it would require artist's brush to paint the scene. Rogers' Rangers, dressed in buckskin, led the way in birch canoes. Lord Howe was there, dressed like a bushfighter; and with bagpipes setting the echoes ringing amid the lonely mountains, were the Highland regiments in their tartan plaids.

Flags floated from the prow of every boat. Each battalion had its own regimental {257} band. Scarcely a breath dimpled the waters of the lake, and the sun shone without a cloud. Little wonder those who pa.s.sed through the fiery Aceldama that was to come, afterwards looked back on this scene as the fairest in their lives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMHERST]

Montcalm had only arrived at Ticonderoga on June 30th. There was no doubting the news. His bushrovers brought in word that the English were advancing in such mult.i.tudes their boats literally covered the lake. It looked as if the fate of Fort William Henry were to be reversed. Montcalm never dreamed of Abercrombie attacking without artillery. To stay cooped up in the fort would invite destruction.

Therefore Montcalm ordered his men out to construct a circular breastwork from the River of the Chutes on the southeast, which empties Lake George, round towards Lake Champlain on the northwest. Huge trees were felled, pile on pile, top-most branches spiked and pointed outwards. Behind these Montcalm intrenched his four thousand men, lying in lines three deep, with grenadiers in reserve behind to step up as the foremost lines fell. At a cannon signal from the fort the men were to rise to their places, but not to fire till the English were entangled in the brushwood. It was blisteringly hot weather. It is said that the troops took off their heavy three-cornered hats and lay in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves, hand on musket, speaking no word, but waiting.

{258} On came the English in martial array, pausing in the Narrows at five o'clock for the troops' evening meal, moving on before daylight of July 6 to the landing place. The Rangers had brought in word that Levis was coming posthaste to Montcalm's aid. Abercrombie thought to defeat Montcalm before reenforcements could come; and now he committed his cardinal error. He advanced across the portage without his heavy artillery. Halfway over, the voice of the French scouts rang out, "Who goes there?" "French," answer the English soldiers; but the French were not tricked. The ambushed scouts fired. Lord Howe, the very spirit of the English army, dropped dead, shot through the breast, though the English avenged his loss by cutting the French scouts to pieces. On the night of the 7th the English army bivouacked in sight of the French barricade. Promptly at twelve o'clock next day a cannon shot from Ticonderoga brought every Frenchman behind the tree line to his place at a leap. Abercrombie had ordered his men to rush the barricade. There was fearful silence till the English were within twenty paces of the trees. There they broke from quick march to a run with a wild halloo! Death unerring blazed from the French barricade,--not bullets only, but broken gla.s.s and ragged metal that tore hideous wounds in the ranks of the English. Caught in the brushwood, unable even to see their foes, the maddened troops wavered and fell back. Again Abercrombie roared the order to charge. Six times they hurled themselves against the impa.s.sable wall, and six times the sharpshooters behind the lines met the advance with a rain of fire.

The Highland troops to the right went almost mad. Lord John Murray, their commander, had fallen, and not a tenth of their number remained unwounded; but the broadswords wrought small havoc against the spiked branches of the log barricade. Obstinate as he was stupid, Abercrombie kept his men at the b.l.o.o.d.y but futile attempt till the sun had set behind the mountains, etching the sad scene with the long painted shadows. Already almost two thousand English had fallen,--seven hundred killed, the rest wounded. The French behind the barricade, where Montcalm marched up and down in his s.h.i.+rt {259} sleeves, grimed with smoke, encouraging the men, had lost less than four hundred. In a spirit of hilarious bravado a young Frenchman sprang to the top of the barricade and waved a coat on the end of his bayonet. Mistaking it for a flag of surrender, the English ceased firing and dashed up with muskets held on the horizontal above heads. They were actually scaling the wall when a French officer, realizing the blunder, roared: "Shoot!

shoot! you fools! Don't you see those men will seize you?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COUNTRY ROUND TICONDEROGA]

Cleaning guns and eating s.n.a.t.c.hes of food, Montcalm's men slept that night in their places behind the logs. Montcalm had pa.s.sed from man to man, personally thanking the troops for their valor. When daylight came over the hills with wisps of fog like cloud banners from the mountain tops, and the sunlight pouring gold mist through the valley, the French rose and rubbed their eyes. They could scarcely believe it!

Surely Abercrombie would come back with his heavy guns. Like the mists of the morning the English had vanished. Far down the lake they were retreating in such panic terror they had left their baggage. Places were found on the portage by French scouts where the English had fled in such haste, marchers had lost their boots in the mud and not stopped to {260} find them. Such was the battle of Carillon, or Ticonderoga,--good reason for Amherst refusing to go on to Quebec.

The year closed with two more victories for the English. Brigadier John Forbes and Was.h.i.+ngton succeeded in cutting their way up to Fort Duquesne by a new road. They found the fort abandoned, and, taking possession in November, renamed it Pittsburg after the great English statesman. The other victory was at Frontenac, or Kingston. As the French had concentrated at Lake Champlain, leaving Frontenac unguarded, Bradstreet gained permission from Abercrombie to lead three thousand men across Lake Ontario against La Salle's old fur post. Crossing from the ruins of old Oswego, Bradstreet encamped beneath the palisades of Frontenac on the evening of August 25. By morning he had his cannon in range for the walls. Inside the fort Commandant de Noyan had less than one hundred men. At seven in the evening of August 27 he surrendered.

Bradstreet permitted the prisoners to go down to Montreal on parole, to be exchanged for English prisoners held in Quebec. Furs to the value of $800,000, twenty cannon, and nine vessels were captured. Bradstreet divided the loot among his men, taking for himself not so much as a penny's worth. The fort was destroyed. So were the vessels. The guns and provisions were carried across the lake and deposited at Fort Stanwix, east of old Oswego. The loss of Duquesne on the Ohio and Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario cut French dominion in America in two.