Death or Victory

by Dan Snow

  Another admirable deception ploy on the part of Wolfe was, as a French journal noted with dismay the next day, to send his ‘flat bottomed boats to make a great circuit, all round the east of the Isle d’Orléans’.8 They arrived on the north side of the island, unseen by the French, and just before dawn they took the men across. While the soldiers established a beachhead, Saunders sent ships to provide fire support. Montresor saw the Captain, sixty-four guns, get as close to the north bank as possible to pound French shore positions. New Englander Captain Rous with his fifty-gun Sutherland also risked the shallow waters on an ebb tide to add his support. A bomb ketch lobbed mortars at the shore, although Montresor was unimpressed, ‘bombs fired on the enemy’s three encampments near the falls of Montmorency, with little effect as most of the fires were short and the distance great’.9 The mortars were actually more effective than he gave them credit for. One French journal writes that ‘the English sent a bomb ketch near to the falls of Montmorency, which fired incessantly throughout the whole night, bombs, and balls…till they forced the Canadians to retire to a less exposed situation’.10

  Whatever the damage caused by the naval gunfire Wolfe’s troops were able to splash ashore and start seizing key ground, with no sign of opposition. The light infantry were in the first flat-bottomed boats, then the grenadiers, led by those from Monckton’s brigade, next those of the Louisbourg garrison and finally those from Townshend’s brigade. Last, the three regiments, Bragg’s 28th, Monckton’s 2nd Battalion of the 60th Royal Americans, and then Lascelles’ 47th. Wolfe was one of the first ashore; his ‘Family Journal’ comments, ‘the descent was effected without firing a shot’.11 In front of them was a very steep escarpment while a few hundred yards to the west the Montmorency River crashed over a spectacular waterfall 280 feet high. When Knox had first spotted it he described it as ‘a stupendous natural curiosity’.12

  The falls had been named by Samuel de Champlain after Henri, Duc de Montmorency who served as a viceroy of New France in the early seventeenth century. Today tourists clamber up a dubious-looking wooden staircase, slippery with spray. Above the falls the river was ‘narrow but deep with high and steep woody banks’, according to an officer in Wolfe’s army.13 It is a description that still rings true. It is no more than one hundred and fifty feet wide but the banks are thickly wooded. There are fords where men and animals could wade across, but these would take time for Wolfe to scout out. They were known to the Canadian defenders and like narrow passes in a range of mountains they were easy for small groups of crack troops to defend. In addition, the journey to the fords on either side was along tracks through thick woodland. By risking a battle in the woods, the British would be, at best, unable to fight in the manner that most suited them, that of fast, massed volleys in the open against an enemy they could see. At worst, they risked another Monongahela. As Wolfe and his officers took in the land with their practised eyes, none of them would have been without any doubt that although they had reached the north shore of the St Lawrence, they still had a river to cross.

  In the next few hours, however, there were far more immediate threats to the force than the prospect of a tricky river crossing at some stage in the future. The landing force was vulnerable: the men were unsure of their new surroundings, no defences bolstered their position, supplies were yet to be landed, the sun was up and the enemy now clearly aware of the move, which the night before had been shrouded by deceit. Wolfe hurried to make camp, no easy task, ‘having five pieces of ordnance to drag up a very difficult hill, and the weather bad’.14 In his haste, according to Brigadier Townshend, who was bringing his brigade ashore next, Wolfe led the grenadiers and light infantry off the beach and left the following troops no indication of where they had gone. As Townshend landed he found

  no one sent to show me the road the rest had taken though it was dark. And found all the baggage of the different grenadiers and light infantry left in a long string in the meadows at considerable distances. No officer to command the whole, and no where more than five men together, so that 10 savages might have plundered the whole and massacred the men one by one.

  The horrified Townshend immediately organized a guard and led his men blindly up the slope, assuming that was where Wolfe had led the vanguard. On catching up with his general, he was shocked to find himself reprimanded: ‘upon my arrival at the headquarters the general gave me a hint that he thought I had not passed—suggesting I suppose that I had been dilatory’. Townshend’s journal brims with righteous indignation; in it he swears that ‘I had never waited a moment but for the mounting of the cannon’.15

  Sadly we do not have Wolfe’s side of the account but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that his relationship with Townshend was not a happy one. Previous generations of historians cast Townshend as the villain of the piece, a scheming aristocratic soldier of no worth who tirelessly undermined the flawless Wolfe. This no longer rings true but in place of certainty we have only conjecture. We know that Wolfe believed Townshend to be a political general and not a professional soldier. This can only have been reinforced by Townshend’s curious choice of uniform while on the campaign. He wrote to his wife, saying, ‘I wear my militia regimentals at Quebec, and trust that if occasion draws them out I shall see more glorious days with that uniform.’16 This flaunted his belief in amateur soldiering in front of Wolfe, the ultimate professional to whom the militia was nothing but an ineffective waste of money. Wolfe was also not allowed to forget Townshend’s unmatchable political connections. Although they were in the depths of a wild continent, they were by no means free from the tentacles of the Georgian state. Orders shouted in the heat of battle could reverberate through the halls of Westminster in months to come. Wolfe’s journal refers to one fascinating example of this. Two days before, on 7 July, he records that there has been ‘some difference of opinion upon a military point termed slight and insignificant and the Commander in Chief is threatened with parliamentary inquiry into his conduct for not consulting an inferior officer and seeming to disregard his sentiments!’17 This is all the more tantalizing because this is the only mention of the incident in any surviving material. It is fairly likely that this ‘inferior officer’ was Townshend and we can be absolutely certain that wearing a militia uniform and threatening his commanding officer with a parliamentary inquiry every time he was not consulted was not the way for Townshend to win Wolfe’s trust and friendship. Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ gives us a typically cutting critique of Townshend’s character, suggesting there were personal as well as political and professional differences between the two. It says that he was ‘of a fickle and inconsistent mind, his line of life not directed by any fixed principles, and as he is exceedingly subject to very high and very low spirits’. The author objected to the company he kept, ‘his favours are not directed by merit, he is always surrounded by the most indifferent subjects in the army’. There is perhaps a hint that Wolfe’s more serious circle found the charismatic Townshend’s popularity threatening: ‘he has a great deal of humour well sustained with bawdy, and may be esteemed an excellent tavern acquaintance; in matters respecting the movements and conduct of an army he is without a scale. The circle is too large for his capacity to embrace.’18

  Their time together in the new Montmorency camp did not lead the two men to bond. In fact, their relationship deteriorated still further. Townshend was appalled when Wolfe appeared to tease him about the strength of his fortifications. Despite being almost surrounded by woods in which hostile forces lurked, Townshend’s journal records that Wolfe ‘went round the front and disapproved of it saying I had indeed made myself secure, for I had made a fortress’.19 Another of Townshend’s documents records that he ‘was almost reprimanded for the strength and form of my fortification’, even though the ‘insecurity of our disposition and outposts had brought the enemy’s savages into the very centre of our quarters’.20 Next they argued about the orientation of the camp and its vulnerability to French cannon across the Montmorency River. Ma
tters came to a head when Townshend heard on 13 July that Wolfe was going to visit the camp at Point Lévis, ‘leaving me the first officer in the camp, not only without orders but also even ignorant of his departure or time of return’. He rushed down the St Lawrence ‘as fast as I could’ and caught Wolfe just before he was about to embark. Townshend recorded that Wolfe received him ‘in a very stately manner; not advancing five steps’. Townshend ‘told him that if I had suspected his intention of going over I had waited on him for his Commands which I should be very glad to receive and execute to his satisfaction’. ‘“Sir,”’ Wolfe replied ‘very dryly, “The Adjutant General has my orders, permit me, Sir, to ask are the troops to encamp now on their new ground or not to do it until the enemy’s battery begins to play.”‘ With this witheringly rude remark, made in public, Wolfe took his leave. Townshend wrote, ‘I must observe that he must have had an uncommon disposition to find fault with me.’21 Wolfe’s clipped journal makes no mention of these disagreements that Townshend records in such detail. Yet again, however, Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ helps to fill in the gaps. Around the middle of July the author of that journal wrote, ‘I was sorry to see the seeds of sedition here, which afterwards grew into a great tree, and spread its branches over Town-shend’s and Murray’s tables; to account for it, one needs only enquire into the characters of the two men, and you there find a soil that must produce such fruit.’ The author is clear, however, that ‘the officers of the army instead of being seduced by their conversation, took offence at it, so gross were their reflections, and so well established the character of Wolfe’.22

  The new camp was surrounded on its landward side by woodland with the Montmorency River and the St Lawrence at their backs. It was a threatening position. Through the morning of the British landings Montcalm’s irregulars dropped into the Montmonrency River and waded across the fords that they knew well. Panet says 200 ‘Ottawa savages moved there willingly’ alongside a number of Canadians.23 A party of rangers, commanded by Captain Benonie Dank, was stationed during the morning around three hundred yards from the new encampment nervously checking the woodland for any threats as working parties cut wood with which to build stockades and other defences. At 1000 hours the silence of the woods was broken by a crash of musketry and the scream of Native American warriors as they followed their volley with a lightning attack. Leaping through the undergrowth they fell upon the rangers, finishing off the wounded, scattering the rest of the stunned company. The dead and dying were scalped with a swift flash of the knife and then the tomahawk was taken to the survivors before they had time to rally. Dank was hit and the rangers had lost around 20 per cent of their strength in a few seconds. Wolfe comments simply that they were ‘defeated’ and suffered, ‘so many killed and wounded as to be almost disabled for the rest of the campaign’.24 Townshend’s account in his private papers is somewhat different to the picture of calm security that he painted for his wife and mother in regular letters home. He wrote that ‘a number of their savages rushed suddenly down upon us from the rocky woody height, drove a few Rangers that were there down to my quarters for refuge, wounded both their officers, and in an instant scalped 13 or 14 of their men’. He found himself directly in harm’s way as one ranger ‘was wounded at my door and the other close by it’. The grenadiers of Bragg’s 28th stood to arms and threw themselves into a counter-attack. ‘Had it not been for Bragg’s grenadiers,’ Townshend records, ‘who attacked the Indians very bravely, whilst some inclined round to the right to surround them—they [would have] spread confusion everywhere.’25

  As so often the Native Americans seemed, according to Panet, to have become ‘preoccupied with taking scalps’ and had lost their cohesion. This left them vulnerable to the grenadiers’ attack and they wisely avoided a pitched battle and disappeared into the woods as quickly as they had struck.26 Some of the wounded were saved by this quick counter-attack. The grenadiers pressed on to the banks of the Montmorency where a withering fire from marksmen on the far bank pinned them down as the Native Americans swam and waded back to safety. Wolfe later reported to Pitt that ‘the enemy also suffered in this affair’ and his ‘Family Journal’ records that ‘by accounts since the Indians lost six killed, 30 wounded, two only were left on the field’.27 The Native Americans always made every effort to carry off their wounded with them so it was difficult to know the scale of their casualties; this led the British to always wildly exaggerate the number of enemy dead and wounded. Panet says that they lost only three men and five injured. The raid was merely the first in a series of vicious encounters in and around the camp at Montmorency. Situated so close to the enemy camp, across usable fords that were well known to the locals, the defenders spent every day feeling like they were under the barrel of an enemy gun, and could only leave the fortifications in force. John Johnson recalled that ‘it was generally reckoned by all, that the duty at Montmorency far exceeded all the rest, both for difficulty and danger’, with his time there punctuated by frequent ‘sharp skirmishes’.28

  After it was over Wolfe’s wounded could look forward to an uncomfortable transfer to the field hospital, which was now set up at the Île d’Orléans camp. Planning for a hospital with a capacity of 400 had been made during the winter. Neat lists of everything required from the two surgeons to ‘1000 wooden spoons’ bear witness to the minute care taken over the preparations for every aspect of the operation. The surgeons were supported by an apothecary, ten surgeon’s mates, a clerk, storekeeper, and a steward. Five hundred beds were brought up the St Lawrence, with 1,500 blankets and 500 sheets. The hospital had its own designated cows and twenty barrels of oatmeal. ‘Particular care’ was taken ‘that there is a sufficiency of medicine’. Two items on the list remind us of the macabre realities of eighteenth-century medicine: the surgeons’ tools, ‘2 Chopping Knives’ and ‘2 Flesh Forks’.29 If the wounded men survived the tender mercies of the surgeons, but were unable to carry on soldiering, then their only safety net was one of two Royal Hospitals.

  The Francophile Charles II had founded a Royal Hospital, in faraway Chelsea, upstream along the Thames from London, in 1681, after apparently being deeply impressed by reports of Louis XIV’s Hôtel des Invalides on the south side of the Seine in Paris for the wornout victims of his self-aggrandizement. Its aim was, and still is, to provide ‘succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war’. Luckily enough Christopher Wren was on hand to build it and the magnificent building was finished in 1692, complete with formal gardens with canals and summer houses that stretched down to the Thames. A full house of 476 pensioners was assembled within a few months. Those seeking residence or simply a monthly stipend had to report in person to Chelsea or the hospital in Dublin, built for the King’s Irish subjects. No system of examination by proxy officials existed. This made it a trying process for Scottish or American veterans who would have to make the arduous journey to appear before the board.

  Pensioners were maintained by a ‘poundage’ paid by serving soldiers, a stoppage of a day’s pay per year from every man in the army. Clearly the nascent British Empire generated more broken old soldiers than the hospital could cater for. Not everyone was as lucky as John Johnson, one of the most detailed chroniclers of the Quebec campaign, who was an ‘in-pensioner’, ‘lodged in safety, basking under the bright beams of His Most Gracious Majesty, in Chelsea Hospital’. As a resident he was ‘plentifully provided with every comfortable necessity of life, by the benevolence of his country’. Thus looked after, ‘and having too much leisure time, and no profitable employment he set himself down; and for the amusement of himself, as also such of his comrades, who were partakers with him in the toils and dangers mentioned in the following memoirs’.30 Most old soldiers were considerably less lucky. They were given a slip of paper which they could present to a magistrate every three months for a pension, usually 5d. a day, less than an agricultural wage, and were otherwise left to fend for themselves.

  Hugh Smith had arrived in Chelsea in March 1759 and inst
antly excited the pity of the board. The register records that he was ‘scalped by the Indians in America’. Room was found for him even though as a 30-year-old he had not served the twenty years that he should have done in order to qualify. Once ensconced he could look forward to two pints of beer a day, a pound of meat and one of bread, and enough tobacco to puff on while he no doubt argued with John Johnson about the ideal length of a musket barrel or whether rifling was any use in the close quarters woodland battles of North America. He is not the only example of a man who survived scalping. The admission rolls bear witness to two or three others who carried this most American of wounds back to the leafy towns and villages west of London.31

  A pattern was now clearly emerging. Using their irregular Canadians and Native Americans in small raiding parties, the French would swoop on the British and hand them a small but eye-catching defeat. There would then be a round of recriminations in the French camp as to why these successes were not followed up. One French officer says that during this last raid, the Native Americans had sent to ‘Chevalier de Levy for assistance’, but he was too slow in responding and ‘arrived too late’. The officer saw this as typical; ‘this was not the only instance, in which the slowness of our motions was a service to the enemy’.32 Another officer was furious that the attack was not pressed home, given that ‘never was more ardor visible than was manifested on this occasion by the soldier, the Canadian and Indian’; many of his fellow officers ‘appeared to despair on seeing such happy arrangements neglected’.33 It was understandable frustration but to a great extent the duration and scale of these raids was determined by the nature of the Native societies from whence these warriors emerged. Their small populations limited the number of available men and also imposed a very conservative understanding of ‘acceptable losses’. Native Americans fought on their own terms, when they found the enemy weak. If they returned to the British camp with reinforcements they would have found a quite unsuitable situation waiting for them. British troops lined up, with shouldered arms and bayonets fixed. Wolfe realized this better than anyone and returned to the subject time and again in his orders to the army. Just days earlier he had told his men that he would order ‘some of the light troops to retire before the enemy at times, so as to draw them nearer to the army, with a view either to engage them to fight at a disadvantage, or to cut off their retreat’.34 In this situation the Native Americans would have thought it worthless pressing home any attack.