6. “To march up”: Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:300. The British attacked with 15 battalions, or about 13,000 men, organized in 3 brigades; the French opposed them with 7 understrength regular battalions reinforced by troupes de la marine and Canadian militia for a total of fewer than 3,500 men. For the Anglo-American order of battle, see William Eyre to Robert Napier, 10 July 1758, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 420; and John Cleaveland, “Journal,” Bulletin of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum 10 (1959): 199 (“Map Made July 8”). French order of battle: Bougainville, Adventure, 231–2 (8 July 1758).
7. “Trees were fell down”: Eyre to Napier, 10 July 1758, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 420, 421. “Cut . . . Down”: Joseph Nichols diary, 8 July 1758, Huntington MS 89, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. “The fier began”: Archelaus Fuller, “Journal of Col. Archelaus Fuller of Middleton, Mass., in the Expedition against Ticonderoga in 1758,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 46 (1910): 209–20 (entry of 8 July 1758).
8. David Perry, “Recollections of an Old Soldier . . . Written by Himself,” The Magazine of History 137 (1928), 9–10 (reprinted from a pamphlet by the same title, pub. Windsor, Vt., 1822).
9. “Constant peele”: Buell, Memoirs of Putnam, 24 (8 July 1758). “When I came”: Dawes, Journal of Putnam, 70–1 (8 July 1758).
10. “It was therefore judged”: Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:300. “News came”: Joseph Nichols diary, 9 July 1758. Abercromby reported 1,610 regular casualties (464 dead, 1,117 wounded, 29 missing) and 334 among the provincials (87 killed, 239 wounded, 8 missing). The first battalion of the 42nd Foot (the Black Watch) lost 203 killed and 296 wounded, or half its strength.
11. “Shamefully retreated”: Artemas Ward diary, 8 July 1758; reproduced in Frederick S. Allis, ed., The Artemas Ward Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society microfilm edition; Boston, 1967), reel 4. “This Day”: John Cleaveland diary, 10 July 1758, 200. “Astonishing Disappointment”: Joseph Nichols diary, 11 July 1758; providentialism, 12 July 1758. “The General [and] his Rehoboam-Counsellors”: John Cleaveland diary, 12 July 1758 (orthography follows MS at Fort Ticonderoga Museum rather than printed version cited above). A closer look at the Bible illuminates what Cleaveland and similarly minded New Englanders made of the defeat: when the Israelites complained to King Rehoboam that their burdens were too heavy, he took counsel not with the wise elders, but only with his boon companions. They told him to say to the people, “whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” This provoked an uprising, and “Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day” (2 Chron. 10:6–19; quotations at vv. 11, 19). Rehoboam’s reign destroyed Israel’s unity: “He did evil, for he did not set his heart to seek the Lord” (2 Chron. 12:14).
12. Dawes, Journal of Putnam, 71 (retrospective entry preceding 20 July 1758).
13. Charles Lee, “Narrative,” 12. A musket ball had broken two of Lee’s ribs, and he was convalescing at Albany when he wrote.
14. Bougainville, Adventure, 235 (10 July 1758); 242 (12 July 1758); 264 (12 Aug. 1758). The Latin translates more literally as follows:
Who was the leader? Who was the soldier? What was the spread-out, immense wood? Behold the sign! Behold the victor! This God, God himself triumphs.
My thanks to Professor Steven Epstein for providing this translation.
15. Ibid., 262 (10–12 Aug. 1758).
16. Ibid., 273–6 (6–12 Sept. 1758). Montcalm had asked to be recalled after the victory of July 8. The unlikelihood of this request being granted made him despair of his chances to stave off the British in the coming year. Something of his state of mind can be deduced from the chimerical plan he began to formulate in the fall of 1758. Thinking of the Anabasis of Xenophon, he resolved to resist the expected invasion of the St. Lawrence Valley, then to retreat westward at the head of as many regulars and troupes de la marine as he could save. After acquiring what support and provisions he could in the Illinois Country, he would descend the Mississippi and make his last stand in Louisiana. See Francis Parkman, France and England in North America, vol. 2, Montcalm and Wolfe (New York, 1983), 1313, 1317–18.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Amherst at Louisbourg
1. “A rash . . . attempt”: Wolfe to Maj. Walter Wolfe, 27 July 1758, in Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (New York, 1909), 384–5. As usual Wolfe was trying to minimize the credit due to his superior officer and to emphasize his own role. British prepare for siege: Amherst to Pitt, 11 June 1758, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., The Correspondence of William Pitt when Secretary of State with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissionersin America (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 1:274; also map, “The Landing on Cape Breton Island . . . 1758,” in Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), facing 195. For a complete account, see J. Mackay Hitsman and C. C. J. Bond, “The Assault Landing at Louisbourg, 1758,” Canadian Historical Review 35 (1954): 314–30. The British lost fifty dead (the majority drowned), sixty-two wounded, one missing; the French lost a hundred killed and seventy captured.
2. Louisbourg’s defenses: Christopher Moore, Louisbourg Portraits (Toronto, 1982), 209–15. Disposition of defenders in 1758: Gipson, Victorious Years, 198–201. On Amherst’s role in the siege, see Daniel John Beattie, “General Jeffery Amherst and the Conquest of Canada, 1758–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1976), 66–90. For the naval vessels in the harbor, a formidable force including six line-of-battle ships and five frigates, see Boscawen to Pitt, 28 July 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:308.
3. Moore, Louisbourg Portraits, 215.
4. This account of the siege follows Gipson, Victorious Years, 197–207; Amherst to Pitt, 11 and 23 June, 6 July, 23 July, and 27 July 1758, in Pitt Corr., 1:271–5, 281–4, 291–3, 303–7; and Boscawen to Pitt, 28 July 1758, ibid., 307–9.
5. Beattie, “Amherst,” 83. Since the landings, the British had lost just 172 dead and 354 sick or wounded; naval casualties numbered approximately 50.
6. “Journal of the Proceedings of the Fleet,” quoted in Gipson, Victorious Years, 196 n. 109.
7. Wolfe to Maj. Walter Wolfe, 27 July 1758, Life and Letters of Wolfe, 385.
8. Beattie, “Amherst,” 85–6.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Supply Holds the Key
1. Boscawen’s task force: Daniel John Beattie, “General Jeffery Amherst and the Conquest of Canada, 1758–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1976), 66; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 180–5. Osborne and Hawke: ibid., 188–90; Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 258–62. Effectiveness of British naval interdiction: Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), 210–11. Most of the British navy’s achievement owed to its effectiveness in breaking up convoys and blockading ports, but one of Osborne’s captains fought the most spectacular single-ship action of the war in the Mediterranean off Cartagena. On 28 May 1758, H.M.S. Monmouth, a fast sixty-four–gun line-of-battle ship, chased and eventually closed to pistol-shot range with the far more powerful Foudroyant, an eighty-gun vessel. In a bloody four-hour engagement the Monmouth shot away two of its opponent’s masts and forced her commander to surrender. This action fascinated contemporaries because the Foudroyant had been Admiral Galissonière’s flagship in Byng’s defeat off Minorca two years before; the Monmouth’s captain, Arthur Gardiner, Byng’s flag captain in that action, engaged the heavily armed French vessel to wipe the stain of Minorca off his reputation; and the officer who surrendered the Foudroyant to Gardiner’s lieutenant (Gardiner having been killed in the fight) was Admiral Ange de Menneville, marquis de Duquesne. The British repaired the Foudroyant, which became on
e of the Royal Navy’s most celebrated vessels. Duquesne’s defeat seriously damaged morale at Versailles even as it fanned British public enthusiasm for the war effort.
2. Gipson, Victorious Years, 247–60.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac
1. On Bradstreet generally, see William G. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit and Preferment in Colonial North America: John Bradstreet’s Quest (Waterloo, Ont., 1982); also the same author’s entry in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, s.v. “Bradstreet, John.” John Shy expresses similar views of Bradstreet’s energy and a less favorable assessment of his character in Toward Lexington:The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 169–71. For his career before 1758, see Godfrey, Pursuit, 21–6, 50–1, 58–9; Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1966; reprint, New York, 1969), 187–8 (“bridel” quotation at n. 2); and Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 365–6. Bradstreet’s advancement owed much to Shirley, whose plan to conquer Louisbourg depended on Bradstreet’s unusually precise knowledge of the fortress. Bradstreet had come by that knowledge by supplying relatives on his mother’s side of the family with English goods to sell in the city. For a regular officer to trade illegally with a foreign colony was of course frowned upon, and Bradstreet’s English patron soon advised him to “Knock off” lest he ruin his career. Typically, Bradstreet did not knock off until war was imminent (Godfrey, Pursuit, 15–20; quotation from King Gould to Bradstreet, 15 Mar. 1742, at 17).
2. Bradstreet to Sir Richard Lyttleton, 15 Aug. and 5 Sept. 1757 in Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 342 n. 14; Godfrey, Pursuit, 99–110. Bradstreet could offer to fund the expedition privately because his post as quartermaster general had given him access to excellent lines of credit in the Albany merchant community, and he was never excessively scrupulous about separating private from public business; moreover, he did nothing to conceal the fact that Fort Frontenac’s stocks of peltry and trade goods made it the richest prize in the interior.
3. Abercromby’s orders, quoted in Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 238–9.
4. Ibid., 239.
5. Ibid., 240; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 366; Godfrey, Pursuit, 126; George F. G. Stanley, New France: The Last Phase, 1744–1760 (Toronto, 1968), 183. Quotation: [John Bradstreet], An Impartial Account of Lieutenant Colonel Bradstreet’s Expedition to Fort Frontenac, to which are added a few reflections on the conduct of that Enterprize, ed. E. C. Kyte (Toronto, 1940), 15.
6. Stanley, New France, 185; Gipson, Victorious Years, 243.
7. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, s.v. “Payen de Noyan et de Chavoy, Pierre-Jacques ”; Godfrey, Pursuit, 129–30. (Because the flag of France under the Bourbons was white, French officers typically called for a truce with red.)
8. “Uncrediable”: Capt. Thomas Sowers’s account, quoted in Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 436–7. “The stores”: Benjamin Bass, “Account of the Capture of Fort Frontenac by the Detachment under the Command of Col. Bradstreet,” New York History 16 (1935): 450 (entry of 17 Aug. 1758). “The garrison made no scruple”: Bradstreet to Abercromby, 31 Oct. 1758, “The Expedition to . . . Fort Frontenac in 1758,” Colonial Wars 1 (1914): 210 n. Bradstreet estimated that the goods divided at Fort Bull amounted to less than “the one fourth part of what were burnt” in the destruction of the fort (Impartial Account, 25–6).
9. Expected reinforcements and demolition of fort: ibid., 22. Division of spoils: Godfrey, Pursuit, 130–1. Bradstreet was entitled to claim a quarter of the plunder, in which case an equal amount would have been divided among the officers, and the remaining half would have gone to the men. Thus he forwent about eight thousand pounds sterling, a remarkable act in a man not normally indifferent to money, but explicable by his own admission that he did it “to encourage the people” (id. to Charles Gould, 21 Sept. 1758, ibid.). Bradstreet had promised his soldiers equal shares at the outset and understood their contractualist views well enough to know that to stint their share would be to invite mutiny and tarnish an achievement from which he hoped his reputation—and his career—would benefit.
10. “To abandon their settlements”: Impartial Account, 29. Abercromby demurs: Godfrey, Pursuit, 133.
11. “Had any one measure”: Impartial Account, 29–30. “Blunders”: Charles Lee to Miss Sidney Lee, 16 Sept. 1758, New-York Historical Society, Collections 4 (1871): 7–8.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Indian Diplomacy and the Fall of Fort Duquesne
1. On Johnson’s lack of help and Forbes’s intention to rely instead on Cherokee scouts, see Forbes to Abercromby, 22 Apr. 1758, in Alfred Procter James, ed., Writings of General John Forbes Relating to His Service in North America (Menasha, Wis., 1938), 69. Forbes’s cousin, James Glen, governor of South Carolina from 1743 through 1756, had pursued diplomatic ties with the Cherokee; retiring as governor, he had stayed on as a merchant and used his contacts to obtain warriors for Forbes (see Tom Hatley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Caroliniansthrough the Era of Revolution [New York, 1993], 69–79). Difficulties in coping with Indians: Forbes to Pitt, 19 May 1758, Writings of Forbes, 92; Forbes to Abercromby, 7 June 1758, ibid., 109. “A very great plague”: Forbes to Henry Bouquet, 10 June 1758, ibid., 112. Alienation of Cherokees: Hatley, Dividing Paths, 102.
2. “He has the Publick Faith”: Forbes to Denny, 3 May 1758, Writings of Forbes, 81–2. “A Treaty on foot”: Francis Halkett to Washington, 4 May 1758, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 5, October 1757–September 1758 (Charlottesville, Va., 1988), 164. The Iroquois had not forwarded peace belts from the Pennsylvania government to the Ohio tribes, nor had Sir William Johnson pressed them to do so. This made perfect sense: the Confederacy had no interest in allowing the Ohio peoples to treat directly with the English, while Johnson’s diplomatic position (like his future as a speculator in western lands) depended on preserving the Covenant Chain alliance system.
3. Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 384.
4. Forbes requests permission: id. to Abercromby, 27 June and 9 July 1758, Writings of Forbes, 126–8, 134–40 (Abercromby granted Forbes authority to conduct independent negotiations on 23 July; see endorsement, ibid., 140). Diplomatic success: Theodore Thayer, Israel Pemberton, King of the Quakers (Philadelphia, 1943), 155–7; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 393–4; Anthony F.C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700–1763 (Philadelphia, 1949), 191; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York, 1991), 250; Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1992), 129–30. Pisquetomen’s companion, Keekyuscung, was an important counselor.
5. On Post, see Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Post, Christian Frederick.” He encountered two Frenchmen near Venango on 7 Aug.; see “The Journal of Christian Frederick Post, from Philadelphia to the Ohio, on a Message from the Government of Pennsylvania to the Delawares, Shawnese, and Mingo Indians, Settled There,” in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, vol. 1 (Cleveland, 1904), 191.
6. “Journal of Post,” 18–19 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1758, in Thwaites, Travels, 1:198–9, 213–17.
7. “It is plain”: ibid., 214. “We long for that peace”: 3 Sept. 1758, ibid., 218–20.
8. 8–22 Sept. 1758, ibid., 226–33; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 396.
9. There is no detailed record of Post’s encounter with Forbes. I have constructed this account from Forbes to
Pitt, 6 Sept. 1758; to Denny, 9 Sept. 1758; to Washington, 16 Sept. 1758; to Horatio Sharpe, 16 Sept. 1758; to Bouquet, 17 Sept. 1758; to Abercromby, 21 Sept. 1758; to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758; and Francis Halkett to Sharpe, 30 Sept. 1758; all in Writings of Forbes, 210–22.
10. Forbes to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758, ibid., 218–19.
11. Forbes to Abercromby, 21 Sept. 1758, ibid., 215–16; Grant to Forbes, n.d. [c. 14 Sept. 1758], in Sylvester K. Stevens and Donald H. Kent, eds., The Papers of Col. Henry Bouquet, ser. 21652 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1940), 130–5.
12. Forbes to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758, Writings of Forbes, 218–19.
13. Forbes to Abercromby, 8 and 16 Oct. 1758, ibid., 227, 234.
14. Forbes to Richard Peters, 16 Oct. 1758, ibid., 234–7. I have interpolated the phrase “all the Waggoners . . . as brave as Lyons” from a letter Forbes wrote to Abercromby the same day; ibid., 234.
15. The following account of the Easton congress has been drawn from the versions in Thayer, Pemberton, 162–70; Stephen F. Auth, Ten Years’ War: Indian-White Relations in Pennsylvania, 1755–1765 (New York, 1989), 90–108; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 396–404; Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 145–51; and Wallace, Teedyuscung, 192–207.
16. Teedyuscung’s speech quoted in Wallace, Teedyuscung, 206; spelling of “Bough” altered for clarity, from original “Bow.”
17. King quoted in Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 400.
18. Thayer, Pemberton, 168 n. 27.
19. Denny’s message to the Ohio tribes, quoted in Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 403.
20. Wallace, Teedyuscung, 239–40; Thayer, Pemberton, 169.
21. “One of the worst”: “Journal of Christian Frederick Post, on a Message from the Governor of Pennsylvania, to the Indians of the Ohio, in the Latter Part of the Same Year [1758],” in Thwaites, Travels, 1:241–2 (hereafter cited as “Second Journal of Post”), quotation from entry of 6 Nov. 1758. “I embrace this opportunity”: Forbes to the Shawanese [sic] and Delawares on the Ohio, 9 Nov. 1758, Writings of Forbes, 251–2; see also id. to Kings Beaver [Tamaqua] and Shingas, 9 Nov. 1758, 252–3.
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