Death or Victory
Page 19
Now these canoes were demonstrating their utility for war as well as trade. On 7 July a British barge was attacked in the north channel between the Île d’Orléans and the Beauport shoreline. A French source says that the Native Americans ‘saw a barge making soundings between the North Shore and the Île d’Orléans. They set about preparations to go there in their canoe, and pursued the barge right onto the island. They fired on the barge, killing several of the English, who were managing it and made a prisoner of an engineer.’107 A British source confirms that ‘one of Admiral Saunders’ barges was taken by canoes with armed men in them, the sailors for so near on shore that they leaped into the water and escaped, excepting one wounded man who was taken’.108 The British on the island sprang into action and rushed down to the beach, firing wildly as they charged. The French journal claims that ‘700 or 800 musket shots’ were fired, ‘which wounded one Indian’. The British prisoner proved reluctant to go with them and so they ‘split his head open, and returned in triumph having the barge in tow’.109 Both sides always maximized the number of combatants and casualties on the other side and minimized their own. But the loss of a barge could not be denied. There was more to come. Later that afternoon one ship’s log records that some gunboats exchanged cannon fire with the frigates Richmond and Baltimore. So slippery were these gunboats that the rest of the fleet had to send ‘flat bottomed boats manned and armed to assist our frigates’.110
Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’, as ever, blames the navy. According to it, the snatched barge was ‘not being supported by other boats’.111 Thomas Bell, Wolfe’s young aide-de-camp, mimics the tone of his boss in his own journal, saying that British shipping was ‘insulted every day’ and crews taken prisoner while nothing was being done to prevent it. Around the same time he wrote, ‘our fleet all retired within the Point of Orléans for fear of Bombs. The Passage from Montmorency to Levy for Boats very dangerous, the floating Batteries still reigning triumphant.’112 Wolfe was openly contemptuous of his fleet; in his journal on 8 July he noted, ‘disposition of the Frigates & Bomb Ketches—their prodigious distance from the Enemy—Amazing backwardnessin these matters on the side of the Fleet’.113 The ‘Family Journal’ goes much further: in one section it describes the ‘difficulties’ Wolfe was faced with in terms of the terrain and Montcalm’s dispositions, and then comments that ‘with regard to our own fleet he had not a few’. Saunders is described as ‘a worthy gentleman and a brave man’ but lacking ‘an understanding framed for such an enterprise’. Apparently, ‘he had been taught to look on Mr Wolfe as a rash madman that would lead into scrapes’. That idea was reinforced, says the journal, ‘by the frozen cold council of some of the captains of the fleet had benumbed every nerve of enterprise’. While entrenched conservatism and timidity paralysed the fleet, ‘the enemy’s floating batteries with impunity insulted our posts, and often cut the communications’. The journal relates how Wolfe attempted to stimulate naval activity, but claims that ‘it was not possible to invigorate’ with ideas ‘to defeat the enemies floating batteries, or to cut them away during the night. The whole were benumbed and dead. Wolfe urged every motive, but in vain.’ Wolfe was in no doubt that it was a failure of the higher leadership: ‘I must assert that the boats for the army were ill commanded, there was only a master and commander to command the whole, whereas there should have been a captain of authority and experience to each division of boats.’ He did at least acknowledge that ‘many of the lieutenants commanding boats were brave and did their duty from motives of honour and regard to the service of their country’. Although the journal noted that, ‘some skulked, authority would have restrained them’.114
What these landlubbers could not realize was that just as they did on shore, where Canadians and Native Americans could harass the much more powerful British regiments with what were essentially guerrilla tactics, the same was true on the water. The large sailing ships were vulnerable to hit and run attacks that could not destroy the fleet but could certainly exhaust it, depress its morale, and delay it from carrying out its other tasks. Ultimately Wolfe and his staff, who had all almost exclusively been army officers since puberty or just before, had no understanding of naval warfare. There was no centralized, formal officer training in the Georgian army, except for the engineers and artillerymen, and certainly no defence academy to prepare men for higher command. Army officers learnt their trade in their regiment; any abstract or wider thinking about military affairs was left to the individual officer’s personal interests.
There was one particular feature of naval custom that drove army officers mad with envy. The sailors of the ‘senior service’ returned from war with vast fortunes gained through prize money; financial rewards derived from the value of any enemy ships they captured. It was a perk hardly ever available to their marching brethren. It was ‘curious enough’ states the ‘Family Journal’ that while ‘death and wounds were rife in the several posts of the army’, the navy was safe on board their ships, far from the expert Canadian marksmen or the tomahawks of the Native Americans. Worse still the fleet were apparently ‘in deep dispute about sharing a prize that was taken in the chops of the river’. The naval officers were bickering about the spoils of war paid for by the blood of Wolfe’s men.115
Wolfe’s diatribe against the fleet that had brought his force so efficiently to Quebec is impossible to excuse but easier to understand. Progress was slow; frustratingly slow, given the overwhelming preponderance of naval power in the basin of Quebec. But Wolfe’s dismissal of his navy’s contribution is not reflected by the French sources. They are universally in awe of the British naval effort. Time and again writers praise the skill and temerity of the British sailors, such as on one occasion when ’an English frigate…[was] seen in the north channel, engaged in trying to penetrate about a mile and a half beyond the falls of Montmorency, which excited the surprise of our pilots; who had always declared, that there was not in that part even water sufficient for a vessel of ten tons’.116
The fleet faced an attritional struggle. It would take time to sweep the French boats from the St Lawrence. The immediate consequence of the navy’s inability to dominate the waters around Quebec by early July was the forced suspension of Wolfe’s thrust upriver. The General’s journal records that Murray had returned from his reconnoitre ‘satisfied with the practicability of the attempt’.117 Mackellar records that ‘upon his return there was a plan fixed for landing there’, and, because the French still blocked the narrows and the purposebuilt flatbottomed boats would not be able to get above the town, ‘some rafts, for ferrying the troops across the river were ordered to be made at Point de Levis’. However, he confirms in the same entry that ‘that plan was soon afterwards laid aside’.118 The scenario that haunted Wolfe was that if he did push a force ashore, the French small boats would block the river and his men would be cut off from reinforcement. He was also nervous about French counter-measures. The French had not remained supine as groups of British troops ranged around on the south shore. Already a force of 300 Canadians had been sent to Anse des Mères just above the town. A French journal tells of a cunning plan to carry ‘a quantity of tents sufficient for a much larger body of troops, in the hope of deceiving the English’.119
Instead of sending grenadiers splashing through the shallows into the enemy’s positions Wolfe sent a strongly worded letter. At midday on 4 July, in the midst of a hail storm, the first of many official messages passed between the commanders of the two belligerents.120 Truces were entirely normal though their protocol was tightly proscribed. If the British initiated the truce a white flag would be waved, while since the French fought under the white Bourbon flag they used a red one to ask for a ceasefire. Emissaries would then emerge. Quick-witted men like Bougainville were often used so that they could engage the enemy in verbal jousting, which would both dampen the spirits of, and glean information from, the enemy officers. Truces were also an opportunity to have a look at the condition of the enemy defences. To prevent this
Amherst ordered his army in 1759 that any messenger was to be kept outside the camp’s defences so ‘that they cannot see any of the post outworks or camps till the answer from the general is returned’.121
The French in Quebec were keen to deny Wolfe’s emissary a good look at their defences. A French journal relates that as the British sloop with its white flag made for the Lower Town, ‘there was some reason to suspect that this was a pretext for sending an engineer, disguised as a common seaman, to take a closer survey of the state of Quebec’. To prevent this, a French boat was sent out to receive the letter, ‘without allowing a nearer approach of the English vessel’.122 Another journal claimed that ‘there were three or four officers or engineers who were disguised as sailors but they were recognized by their look and their hands being white and not used to hard labour’.123
Wolfe’s letter declared his intention to attack Quebec. This chivalrous, if spectacularly superfluous, announcement also contained a threat. It warned that ‘it was his Majesty’s express command to have the war conducted without practising the inhuman method of scalping, and it was expected the French troops under [Montcalm’s] command to copy the example, as they shall answer the contrary’. Wolfe was trying to impose the norms of European warfare on a campaign that stubbornly refused to comply. Le Mercier carried Vaudreuil’s reply to the British ‘taking two or three captains with him, dressed as sailors, to look at the state of the enemy fleet’.124 Vaudreuil attempted to conjure up some of the defiant rhetoric of his forebear, Frontenac, who had so haughtily dismissed a previous British surrender demand. He intimated his ‘surprise’ that ‘with so few forces [Wolfe] would attempt the conquest of so extensive and populous a country as Canada’.125 He also let Durell know that his grandson, snatched on the Île aux Coudres, was in good health and that he ‘had treated the prisoners with honour, and that as soon as the Admiral will have the kindness to inform him of his departure, that he will send them back to him’.126
Vaudreuil’s defiant words projected a unity that was in reality absent from the French high command. Internecine squabbling split the French decision makers just as it had set Wolfe against his naval officers and at least one brigadier. Many felt that the French had let the British come ashore and consolidate their positions. Crowds gathered and demanded to be sent to attack the enemy, who were even now preparing batteries which would unleash a terrible bombardment on their town.127 Every civilian diarist became a tactical genius, advocating ambushes and assaults that would surely drive the British back into the Atlantic. One stated that ’it is evident that had there been 500 or 600 savages at the isle of Orléans, and as many at the Pointe de Lévis, they would have been able, at the moment of the debarkation of the English, or on their penetrating into the woods, to have killed a great number, and perhaps have entirely defeated them’. The reason for this being that ‘the English were all regular troops, who marched in close ranks, and would not have dared to engage where the woods were so thick as to be almost impervious’.128 Another account pointed out that even if these kinds of attacks were beaten off, ‘a secure retreat was always to be found in the woods in the rear, where the Canadian and Indian, ‘tis known, possess so great an advantage over regulars’.129 The problem for the interventionists was working out where best to aim the blow. The British ‘were endeavouring to mislead us’, complained one journal, ‘it was also difficult for us to judge in which place they had their largest body of troops’.130
In early July the first resupply convoy sailed up the St Lawrence and delivered food to the British forces. Knox tasted ‘fresh provisions’ for the first time since landing.131 The unglamorous business of resupplying the British army would determine whether Quebec would stand or fall. No troops, however brave, skilled, motivated, or well led, could survive without food in their bellies and powder in their cartridge cases. The army and fleet would not be forced to raise the siege due to a shortage of food. This remarkable logistical achievement was the bedrock on which Wolfe could make his next moves.
SIX
A New Kind of War
THE SUN WAS LOW in the western sky, and Quebec was etched in a bright golden backlight. The long sloping roofs of the Upper Town and the spires of the cathedral flashed as the sun reflected off into the basin below. On the tip of Île d’Orléans the hour had arrived. Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ relates how they had been waiting all day for the light to dip, and ‘at 8 O’clock in the evening, when the enemy could not see our motions, the general began his march’.1 Half of the tents in the camp had been struck and were now on carts; the other half stood to lull the enemy into thinking that nothing was afoot. First to leave the camp, of course, were the light infantrymen and the rangers. Wolfe’s harsh criticism of the latter, so violent before the campaign started, was now muted. His constant use of them as scouts and to secure the flanks of his army on the march suggested that they had won his grudging respect. These men left camp in a loose formation, dressed in a roguish assortment of gear, their unit denoted only by the dark green jackets that had been found for them. Tomahawks dangled from straps at their waists. Filthy rolled-up blankets were wrapped around their torsos. In their arms most cradled their muskets, while a minority carried longer rifles, which they had carefully loaded before leaving camp. Their flints were good and sharp, the powder and ball rammed home, the frizzen snugly in position, protecting the priming powder. On their heads was a highly irregular assortment of caps and hats made from leather and fur and many were decorated with flowers and feathers, like young boys playing at soldiers. Behind them, marching in columns to a regular drumbeat, came the red-coated men of Wolfe’s infantry. Their muskets were strictly sloped on their left shoulders, forming the longest side of a triangle with their left arm supporting the butt, a forearm’s length away from the body. The rhythmical crunch of their studded shoes on the earth, the rattle of the drummer’s sticks on the tight skin of the drumhead, the jangling of thousands of pans and kettles in backpacks, the clink of flask, and the soft thud of bayonets which swung and bounced against their thighs as the men trudged along, all combined to form the instantly recognizable soundtrack to the men’s lives.
It was twilight on 8 July 1759 and over two thousand soldiers were on the march. Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ says ‘the corps was composed of the Grenadiers of Louisbourg, the light infantry of the line, the grenadiers of the 1st brigade, General Townshend’s Brigade and [Captain] Dank’s Rangers’.2 Unable to land forces upriver of Quebec, Wolfe was looking elsewhere to break the stalemate on the St Lawrence. Earlier that day, Wolfe had found time to reply to an acquaintance, Captain Henry Parr, who had written to him hoping for a job. Wolfe told him that ‘I have little time for letter writing as you can well fancy at present’ and a sense of his frustration is palpable. ‘Thus far,’ he continued, ‘we have done little, although M de Montcalm has suffered badly from our cannon and mortar.’ However, ‘tomorrow, all being well, we move a little closer, changing camp to the north bank of the river’.3 To that end the column made its way towards the north shore of the Île d’Orléans, ‘to that part of the island opposite the falls of Montmorency’.4 Here they would be met by the flat-bottomed boats which would ferry them across to the north bank of the St Lawrence to the east of the Montmorency falls.
There would be an impressive deception campaign, planned by Wolfe to stop the French concentrating their forces and attempting to repel the landing. ‘In order to draw the enemy’s attention elsewhere the camp was struck at Levis, and the boats of the fleet assembled there; and Lawrence’s battalion [3rd/60th] that were aboard the transports threatened Beauport.’5 This carefully synchronized ballet of all the disparate parts of Wolfe’s force should paralyse the French response until the landings were beyond their most vulnerable early stages.
The French spent the night, as they had spent every other since the landings on Île d’Orléans, awake and in their trenches, redoubts, and batteries, expecting a British assault. One journal records that, ‘every night had be
en passed under Arms, both in the camp, and in Quebec; from the apprehension that each succeeding night was to be that of the intended disembarkation’.6 As Saunders’ ships escorted the transports closer to Beauport and around Point Lévis, one French officer commented that there was ‘a doubt in our camp, whether this motion of the enemy had any real object or design’. This officer suggested that the high command regarded this latest movement as another feint and ‘under this false persuasion, that nothing could be attempted on that side, no measures were taken, either to prevent or disconcert their operations, or to make them purchase their success at a dear rate’.7