by Dan Snow
The column reached the ford a few hours later. On the far side there was ‘a breast work of considerable extent’.32 Wolfe tried to get a good look at the practicality of crossing it but was forced to stay under cover by a withering fire from the far bank. ‘As the river is narrow here,’ his ‘Family Journal’ says, ‘the enemy’s fire galled our left from their entrenchments.’33 It was harrowing but worse was to follow. At 0900 hours another attack from across the river threatened to overwhelm Wolfe’s column completely.
‘A strong body of Indians passed over to attack us,’ reported Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ and the outcome was ‘doubtful for some time’.34 Mackellar estimated that no less than fifteen hundred men now attacked the British. They had crept up the riverbank from a ford higher up and now hurled themselves at a company of light infantry who retreated under the onslaught. The French attack then crashed into two companies of Otway’s 35th Regiment. As always this assault relied on speed, surprise, and accuracy with the musket or rifle. These lightning tactics were supposed to spread panic in the enemy and make them scatter, allowing the attackers to hunt down the isolated individuals. The psychological impact was paramount. Against novices these tactics were awesomely effective.
The 35th were no novices. They were no longer the men who, two years before at Fort William Henry, had surrendered to Montcalm’s army and naively expected safe passage to the nearest British fort. On that terrible occasion the Native allies of the French, furious that not a scalp had been taken and the enemy were allowed to march away, could not be restrained and had fallen on them. The wounded in the infirmary had been slaughtered and soldiers initially robbed and then beaten and killed. In desperation the British soldiers had offered the Natives their own rum ration, only to fan the flames as the alcoholcrazed attacks became more and more brutal. Even fresh graves were dug up and corpses scalped. French officers had intervened, appalled that the terms of surrender were being broken. Around two hundred men, women, and children were killed, and many others captured. These latter were ransomed and returned to the British by a contrite French colonial administration. Many survivors scattered into the wilderness and stumbled back to British-held territory days later. It was denounced as a war-crime throughout the English speaking world. Now on the banks of the Montmorency the men of the 35th were taking their revenge.
The unit was vastly changed to the one that had arrived in New York in June 1756. The battered and discoloured orange cuffs and facings on the men’s red coats still paid tribute to their roots as a Protestant Irish regiment originally raised in 1701 in Belfast by a wealthy landowner who paid for it out of his own pocket. They were granted permission to wear orange facings by King William of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who came from a family whose origins had been in Orange, a principality in northern Provence. He was seen as a hero by Protestant British settlers in Catholic Ireland for defending the Protestant ascendancy and to this day the colour orange is closely associated with the Protestant Irish identity. But years of service in North America had changed the ethnic mix of the regiment.
Only Protestants were supposed to serve in the British army, but during times of war Catholic Irishmen were regularly found in the ranks, especially of Irish regiments. Fresh recruits were sent out from Ireland and no questions asked, especially given that Otway’s regiment was chronically short of men. At 500 officers, NCOs, and privates, it was at around half-strength. All the regiments had made great efforts to recruit in North America. After all, the colonials were subjects of George II and in the mid-eighteenth century regiments had none of the regional affiliations that were assigned to them a few decades later. It has been suggested that over ten thousand redcoats in the North American army throughout the Seven Years War were American born.35
Their appearance and the way they fought had changed just as much as their nationalities. Gone was the parade ground perfection. One North American veteran wrote that
the art of war is much changed and improved here. I suppose by the end of the summer it will have undergone a total Revolution…Our hair is about an inch long…Hats…are worn slouched…coats are docked…The Highlanders have put on breeches…swords and sashes are degraded, and many have taken up the hatchet and wear Tomahawks.36
A year and a half before, Knox had watched a detachment that had been sent out to gather firewood return from the woods. They looked like a ‘detachment of Hungarian or Croatian irregulars’.37 Another officer wrote to a friend saying, ‘you would laugh to see the droll figure we cut…You would not distinguish us from common plough men.’38 Beards were left to grow, clothes chosen for utility not martial appearance. The man who had pioneered these changes had been the unfortunate George Augustus, Viscount Howe, older brother of William who now commanded the light infantry of Wolfe’s army. Time spent at Westminster School, Eton College, and the backbenches of the House of Commons had not prevented George Augustus from embracing this new kind of warfare. According to one witness he ‘laid aside all pride and prejudice, and gratefully accepted counsel from those whom he knew the best qualified to direct them’. He eschewed the ‘pedantry of holding up standards of military rules where it was impossible to practise them’.39 On his instructions hair, coats, and hats were cropped so as to limit anything that could get snared on undergrowth. In the early engagements of the war officers had paid a terrible price for the signs of seniority that they wore. Native Americans and Canadians prided themselves on their worth as marksmen and they knew exactly whom to aim for on the battlefield. Officers in Europe wore a sash over one shoulder as well as gorgets, a decorative symbolic accessory that hung loosely around the throat; both were discarded after the first brush with enemy sharpshooters. As was the lace that bedecked rich officers’ coats once it was found that it attracted Abenaki snipers as surely as it did the ladies of St James’s.
This relaxation of dress code was reflected in the hunt for new tactics, better suited to the tough conditions. Before it left Ireland, the 35th had been trained for war in Europe. Volume of fire was more highly prized than accuracy. Here in North America shots had to count. Robert Rogers, the pioneering ranger, had made enemies at the commissariat by insisting on using up valuable ammunition to practise firing at targets. The 60th Regiment was founded in North America and from the beginning its doctrine was different from regiments raised in Britain and Ireland. Soldiers were
sent to fire at Marks [targets], and in order to qualify for the service of the woods, they are to be taught to load and fire, lying on the ground and kneeling. They are to be taught to march in order, slow and fast, in all sorts of ground. They are frequently to pitch and fold their tents, and to be accustomed to pack up and carry their necessities in the most commodious manner. 40
The commander of the 1st battalion, 60th Royal American Regiment was a Swiss-born professional soldier who had served in at least two continental armies, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Bouquet. A Highlander serving alongside his battalion commented that ‘every afternoon he exercises his men in the woods and bushes in the manner of his own invention, which will be of great service in an engagement with Indians’.41 He issued his sixteen best marksmen with rifles. These were weapons with grooves, or ‘rifling’, cut into the barrel. These grooves spun the ball which meant that it left the muzzle with greater speed and accuracy, which is why rugby and American football players attempt to achieve the same effect on a long pass. Other units imitated the 60th although the rangers preferred the smooth bore musket for fighting in woodland since the thickness of the foliage ensured that they rarely got a clear shot at over fifty yards. They found a musket was more useful than an accurate rifle which took longer to load. Some even chopped a few inches of barrel off their muskets to make them lighter and easier to handle. The newly raised Highland regiments were issued with shorter muskets, or carbines, anticipating the close combat they would face in North America.
Wolfe had written brilliantly about the kind of tactics required in ‘strong enclosed country’ as a battali
on commander hungry to see more action in 1755. He told his men that ‘every inch of ground that is proper for defence’ should be ‘disputed with the enemy’. They should ‘without confusion or disorder’ move from ‘place to place’ to ‘fall on the enemy with advantage, or retire when it is proper to do so’ thus drawing ‘the enemy into a dangerous position’. Always, they should remember to make every shot count by ‘levelling their pieces properly’.42 Passages like these demonstrate a strikingly modern way of thinking about fire and movement. Nothing could be further from the old cliché of eighteenth-century soldiers as unthinking criminals firing volleys in stiff ranks, kept there only by the threat of flogging and hanging. His writings suggest that while he may have been poor at maintaining good relations with his subordinates and could be indecisive, Wolfe was a hugely gifted tactician.
Wolfe’s army had spent months training for this type of warfare. Knox relates how at the beginning of campaigns the men were ‘constantly employed in forming and dispersing in the woods, and in other exercises adapted to the peculiar method of carrying on war in close-covered countries’.43 They were encouraged to spread out in open order, and in the event of an ambush, the shout went out to ‘Tree All’,44 upon which everybody would dive for cover behind trees. Ultimately Native attacks had to be met with aggression and determination. Montcalm’s ADC, the Chevalier Johnstone, wrote a curious and unreliable account of the summer in which he puts words into the mouths of the protagonists like a classical historian. There is one particular passage that has the ring of truth, in which Johnstone visualized Wolfe describing the fierce skirmish on the Montmorency. ‘There is no other method,’ Johnstone imagined Wolfe saying, ’for troops to defend themselves against the Indians than what I practised with success, when I was surprised by them at the ford of Montmorency: the soldiers, with fixed bayonets, dispersed themselves, rushed on in disorder towards the places where they perceived the smoke of the Indians’ discharge; and by these means my detachment in the woods chased away your nine hundred Indians.’45
The redcoats would never master the Native Americans but skirmishes like this one showed that at least it was a more even contest than the horrific early years of the war had been. The men of Otway’s with support from the light infantry stabilized the British position and seem to have chased the Native and Canadian troops back to the ford. Despite the eventual victory it had been a vicious fight. Mackellar records that they ‘had 55 men killed and wounded, officers included’.46 In his journal Wolfe blames most of the casualties on fire from the other side of the river which caught the British during their ‘indiscreet pursuit’ of the enemy. 47 Among the wounded was Wolfe’s aide-de-camp, Thomas Bell, who wrote, ‘I got my arm broke by the Rascals.’48
On the French side there were mixed feelings. The British army had been bloodied but again many felt that it had been an opportunity lost.
One officer wrote that the attack ‘was so impetuous that according to what we since learned…The English, obliged to fall back, retired more than two hundred paces from the field of battle in order to rally, and the alarm extended as far as the camp.’ He says that reinforcements were sent to follow up the initial success but they were too late and ‘the entire army regretted the loss of so fine an opportunity’.49 Panet, a Canadian by outlook, if not by birth, was deeply dissatisfied. He insisted that ‘the consternation was so great among the English that they were crying: “all is lost”’, but yet again, ‘we did not take advantage of this blow’. He blamed the fact that de Lévis had felt obliged to check with Montcalm before leading reinforcements to the river and as a result ‘arrived too late’.50 Yet again the discussions following the operation exacerbated divisions between Frenchmen and Canadians. The latter were, on the whole, more inclined to pursue a forward policy. In the middle of July Montcalm noted in his journal that the Canadians are ‘disgusted’ and ‘discouraged’ by the ‘slowness’ of this campaign. They preferred, he wrote, to make a sudden aggressive blow and then return home. ‘It is regrettable that circumstances do not permit us to risk the fate of the colony on a single blow.’51 Relations did not improve; at the end of July Montcalm wrote to de Lévis saying that ‘they are all crazy, and, because I have to deal with them, soon, I will not be any wiser than them’.52
There is also a sense in both Johnstone’s cryptic text and Mackellar that the way the redcoats had rallied after their initial wobbles showed that they were no longer as terrified of the Native Americans as they had been. Johnstone imagines Montcalm talking to Wolfe in Hades saying, ‘the Indians told me on your return, that it was now no more possible to fight you as formerly since the English had learned their way of fighting’.53 This is obviously fanciful but Mackellar mentions in his diary that ‘the Indians were dispirited from that day’s loss for the rest of the campaign’.54 Ramezay puts that loss at only twelve men killed and injured. It seems likely that this was a conservative estimate.55
Even if the Native Americans were unhappy that the British no longer ran at the merest whoop, the British were hardly euphoric. They had been made to pay a bloody price for simply looking at the ford.
The next day Wolfe wrote to Monckton informing him of the skirmishes, ‘in which our people were victorious but lost more than the enemy’.56 No one had any desire to take another march through the woods.
He reported to Pitt that ‘in reconnoitring the river Montmorency, we found it fordable at a place about three miles up; but the opposite bank was entrenched, and so steep and so woody, that it was to no purpose to attempt a passage there’.57 Wolfe’s attempts to threaten Montcalm’s two flanks had come to nothing. The ships above the town needed reinforcing before they could achieve anything and pushing across the Montmorency involved a dangerous passage through thick woodland and a river crossing guarded by strong entrenchments. Many in the British force found Wolfe’s apparent lack of a coherent strategy grating. A naval officer wrote to Governor Lawrence in Halifax at the beginning of August. The letter provides a glimpse into a deep pool of frustration. ‘Within the space of five hours we received at the general’s request, three different orders of consequence, which were contradicted immediately after their reception,’ wrote the officer. Nor was this an isolated incident; in fact, it had been ‘the constant practice of the General ever since we have been here to the no small amazement of everyone who has the liberty of thinking’. The officer was damning: ’Every step he takes is wholly his own; I’m told he asks no one’s opinion, and wants no advice.’58 Townshend confided in his journal at this time that ‘the general seemed to be at a stand which place to make his attack’.59 News and rumour were inseparable fellows as they swept around the shores of the Quebec basin from mouth to mouth. Knox recorded in his journal that ‘many new projects are talked of; but, I believe, from no other motive than to amuse the enemy, in order that false intelligence may be circulated throughout their camps, should any of our soldiers desert, a practice common in all armies’.60
The French command was no more unified. Deeply frustrated by his fellow officers, like Vaudreuil and Le Mercier, Montcalm wrote in his journal at the end of July: ‘In whose hands are we? What kind of outcome can we expect from such people?’61 He, like many on the British side, was utterly confused about Wolfe’s intentions. On 20 July his journal says simply, ‘this whole thing becomes every day more obscure’.62 News of skirmishes beyond either flank, new batteries being erected in Montmorency, ships passing the town to threaten his right: it was an impenetrable intelligence picture. He spent the whole of that night on the ramparts of Quebec peering into the murk ready to unleash the town’s artillery at the merest glimpse of a British ship heading upriver to join her comrades. There was no movement. During the days he wrestled with increasing shortages of powder, for which he blamed corruption, and food, which he suspected the inhabitants were hiding. At the beginning of June the authorities had requisitioned all oxen and bulls in the Quebec area. Now, at the end of July, this order was extended to Trois Rivières.
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sp; As July came to a close Wolfe had determined to make a serious attempt at breaking into the enemy’s position. Having been frustrated on either flank Wolfe’s gaze had drifted back to where it had first fallen: the Beauport shore.
Before Wolfe could land his blow the British fleet found themselves on the receiving end of yet another terrifying attack. There was a strong ebb tide on the night of 27/28 July and, according to the log of the Stirling Castle, ‘at midnight saw a sky rocket from the French camp which proved a signal for setting on fire a large raft of fire stages which they sent down upon us’.63 One naval lieutenant described his terror in a letter, ‘I was hugely alarmed with a most dreadful sight. The enemy had linked together 100 fire stages, which spread a full 400 yards in length.’64 Rather than sending down a squadron of fireships the French deployed an ingenious line of rafts which Mackellar had got a glimpse of when a prisoner in Quebec. He called them radeaux à feu or ‘fire rafts’ and described them as platforms stacked with timber and other flammable materials ‘tied together by the ends so as to form a chain, and coated over with a strong composition, they are to be set on fire when the ships are near’. Ideally they would then wrap themselves around the bows of ships and set them on fire.65 Other accounts estimate that there were two or three hundred of these fire rafts. Knox wrote that ‘it could not be less than an hundred fathoms [600 feet] in length, and was covered in grenades, old swivels, gun and pistol barrels loaded up to their muzzles, and various other inventions and combustible matters’.66
The French were desperate to avoid a repetition of the futile sacrifice of their fireships. This time they were commanded by Courval, ‘an intelligent, skilful man’ and ‘a Canadian, who had given these last years proofs of his bravery’. He guided the chain of rafts to within ‘musket range of the first ship’ before setting them on fire.67 The Lowestoft’s log reported that they were ‘so contrived that they were all in a flame in one minute’.68 However, the British fleet was prepared for their sudden appearance. An officer on board the Lizard reported in a letter that ‘we have a number of boats lie on guard every night under the walls of the town, ready to receive any fire machines that may be sent down’.69 These were armed with ‘grapnels and chains fitted a purpose to grapnel them and tow them clear of the fleet’.70 They pulled hard on their oars, aiming for the rafts, while the most upriver frigate slipped her anchor and calmly signalled to the rest of the fleet. The French seem to have anticipated this interdiction by the guard boats. Attached to the fire rafts was a large platform around five yards square. It sat about two feet high out of the water and was not on fire. Thinking it was a good base from which to throw a grapnel a midshipman from the Dublin leapt aboard, his boat being ‘nigher and brisker than the rest’. No sooner had he done so than the raft exploded, having been booby trapped to detonate when ‘the least weight falls on it’. He was killed and three of his crewmen injured. The Lizard‘s officer commented that it ‘was very fortunate that there were no more boats near’.71
