At least the family at home had the newspapers for information about their beloved George, for he was becoming something of a celebrity. The papers had been predicting a “Campaign in the Snow, under my Lord Howe, and Capt. Rogers, a famous Partisan.” Lord Howe, the papers said, “has, ever since his Arrival in America, gained the Affections of the People here more than any other Military Gentleman that ever came from Europe; Fatigue to him is trifling; and a Bear’s Skin and the soft side of a Board is as agreeable to him as a Bed of Down.”13
Did his family guess his hardships when they read that, under his command, even the officers slept in tents and ate the king’s plain provisions, their clothing limited to a change of shirts and stockings, liquor prohibited, and the women camp-followers excluded? George set the example by washing his own shirts in nearby waterways and baking crude cakes of flour and water over a fire; word of this even reached the ears of an enemy Frenchman, who, impressed, described George as “strong-willed and highly admired.”14
One wonders whether Caroline laughed to picture her brother, always surrounded by admiring women at home, scrubbing his own linen and trying to learn the art of making drop scones on heated rocks. But, interspersed with these colorful stories, there were reminders of the real and present danger: attacks by a hidden enemy, scalpings, ambushes. The notorious massacre at Fort William Henry of English prisoners by Indian allies of the French had shocked Britain and its colonies in the summer of 1757 and heightened anti-French feeling. The Derby Mercury, reporting on the example set by George in camp, concluded with an account of recent scalpings and murders by Indians who had been believed to be “our Friends.”15
By the time George wrote to Aunt Juliana in March 1758, he had become a brigadier general, and Lord Loudoun had been recalled to England. William Pitt was now secretary of state in a new administration that he shared with his old foe the Duke of Newcastle—a surprising political alliance that would last until Britain won the war. The recall of Loudoun was somewhat unfair, for he had established the groundwork for much of the future success of the campaigns in America, but Pitt was impatient—the next campaign had to be a success—and Loudoun had a hostile relationship with the American colonies that were supposed to provide him essential aid and assistance. Frustrated by what he saw as their parochial attitudes toward the common cause, Loudoun acted out the stereotype of the haughty British officer, his tactlessness hindering the war effort.
Pitt moved quickly to get past the problems hindering Anglo-American cooperation, offering subsidies to the colonial governments in return for troops. He also removed the humiliating condition of colonial military service stipulating that all colonial officers of whatever rank were beneath the rank of a British regular captain.16 Pitt wanted active, ambitious commanders who would get the job done, and Lieutenant General John Ligonier, who had recently replaced the Duke of Cumberland as commander in chief of the army, agreed with him. An obstacle to this positive strategy was the conventional King George II, who valued long-serving, experienced officers over youth and panache.17
Lady Yarmouth’s close friendship with Lady Howe explains the path by which the young Lord Howe, despite the king’s misgivings, came to be appointed as the guiding light for the forthcoming 1758 campaign against Ticonderoga. For it was Lady Yarmouth who persuaded her royal lover to give Howe the position of second-in-command, with the older and unimaginative Major General James Abercromby only nominally in charge. Elsewhere, in keeping with Pitt’s wishes, the same arrangement was used when the dynamic James Wolfe was promoted to brigadier general under Major General Jeffery Amherst for the 1758 Louisbourg campaign.18
A well-known description of George on campaign in the summer of 1758 comes from the journal of a young provincial soldier from Connecticut whose regiment formed part of the force sent to Ticonderoga. George, he wrote, was “the idol of the army”:
From the few days I had to observe his manner of conducting, it is not extravagant to suppose that every soldier in the army had a personal attachment to him. He frequently came among the carpenters, and his manner was so easy and familiar that you lost all that constraint or diffidence we feel when addressed by our superiors, whose manners are forbidding.19
That was the thing: George had a talent for meeting people at their own level. His social versatility made him admirably suited to promote innovations that blurred the distinction between officers and men. No wonder Abercromby’s army, assembling at Albany, New York, in June 1758, gravitated to him as their natural leader. They numbered seventeen thousand all told—British regular and light infantry, Highland regiments, companies of rangers and Stockbridge Indians, provincial troops from New York and New England—all coming together for the business of making war against the French.20 As one historian put it, George “fully understood that if he gave provincial soldiers what they expected from their leaders, they would follow willingly.”21 The force of his personality inspired his multicultural army to work well together.
In Albany, civilians also were charmed. George befriended Madame Margarita Schuyler, matriarch of one of the town’s leading families. She adored him—his gentle manners, his fine hair, his sense of justice, his willingness to share the hardships of his men in contrast to some of the other officers—and he was not too proud to accept advice and counsel from those best qualified to know, including Madame Schuyler herself. To her delight, he called her “Aunt Schuyler,” not realizing that George came from a world where aunts were the authority figures.
On the night before the army was to move from Albany, Madame Schuyler had a serious conversation with the young brigadier general, cautioning him about the dangers of his expedition. George knew the dangers just as well as she possibly could, but he evidently listened with the utmost politeness. The next morning, she presented him with a full breakfast (“he smiled and said he would not disappoint her, as it was hard to say when he might again breakfast with a lady”), and, having accepted her farewell tears and embraces, he was off.22 Yet it was not so much the upcoming hazards that George needed to bear in mind, but rather his own inborn impetuosity.
By July 5, Abercromby’s army was encamped at Lake George, a thirty-two-mile-long lake in northeastern New York that drains into the much larger Lake Champlain. In a carefully planned and executed operation, hundreds of boats, forming a mile-wide flotilla, were ready to transport the troops over water. Twenty-five miles up the lake, the army disembarked and set up camp, pitched tents, lit fires, and appeared to settle down for the night.
Captain John Stark of Rogers’ Rangers later recalled that night. Lord Howe lay on a bearskin “(his Lordship’s camp bed)” discussing the tactics for the next day.23 But the English lord and the New England scout could not have conferred for long, for their encampment was a ruse. The entire army reembarked under cover of darkness, while the fires still burned, and slipped past the watching French scouts. At dawn on July 6, Abercromby’s waterborne army was spotted by French advance posts at the north end of Lake George. Abercromby and Howe were delighted to find that the French had retreated before them, burning their entrenched camps as they went. Everything was going according to plan.24
Once the army was ashore, just two miles from Fort Ticonderoga, George lost no time. Rogers’ Rangers, together with British skirmishers of the 80th regiment, had gone ahead to secure the area. George formed the main army into three columns, putting himself at the head of a fourth, made up of American provincial rangers and soldiers. It was two in the afternoon by the time all was ready. The objective was to trap the French on the peninsula where Ticonderoga stood. As the columns moved independently through the woods, a disoriented 350-strong French scouting party, deserted by its Indian guides who chose not to wait for the English juggernaut sailing up Lake George, collided with the American rangers. It was four in the afternoon.
A fierce firefight ensued. Hearing the shots, George, at the head of his column, rushed to the scene. He reached the crest of a hill within sight of the engagement. At
that instant, a shot went through his lungs and heart, shattering his backbone. He sprawled on his back, one hand quivered, and George was dead.25
When George Augustus Lord Howe died, it was said that the campaign died with him; “the soul of General Abercrombie’s army seemed to expire,” as one put it.26 “[M]e Lord was cilled,” a foot soldier from Massachusetts wrote simply in his journal, his use of the shortened nomenclature reflecting the affection in the ranks for the aristocratic leader.27 The campaign had been substantially George’s inspiration.
General Abercromby vacillated for a day or two, uncertain of how to proceed without his dynamic young brigadier general. Then, with the poor judgment that so often adds to the horror of war, he decided to launch a frontal assault on an incomplete fortification spotted by his advisers. The result was “the heaviest loss of life that His Majesty’s forces sustained during the whole American war,” as British and American soldiers were mowed down “like a field of corn.” In a series of futile charges on the fort, they found themselves trapped between a murderous wooden abatis of sharpened tree trunks and the incessant fire of the enemy. The British artillery sent by water to provide cover for the assault had been unable to land, neutralized by enemy fire. By the end of that bloody day, more than five hundred American and British soldiers had died, and well over a thousand were wounded. Although they still outnumbered their enemy, the Anglo-American army withdrew to lick its wounds, leaving the French in possession of Ticonderoga, to the joy and astonishment of their commander, the Marquis de Montcalm.28
George Lord Howe was only thirty-three when he died. His tragic end perhaps vindicated the reluctance of King George II to appoint young and less experienced officers to high command. Tradition has held that Lord Howe’s own impetuosity exposed him to fatal danger. As second in command, he should not have been at the head of any march, but he had insisted and Abercromby had given way—“a stupid mistake” in the verdict of one historian. A week after the disaster, an eyewitness recalled briefly that “Lord Howe was at the head of the Rangers, notwithstanding all the remonstrances made him.”29 American ranger Major Israel Putnam was with George at the moment when they heard the noise of the firefight between the French scouting party and the American advance force. According to Putnam’s biographer, the ranger urged Lord Howe to remain behind while he investigated. But “your life is as dear to you as mine is to me. I am determined to go,” declared Howe, forging ahead to his death.30 The story of George’s final moments no doubt became embellished over the years, but the implication of rashness has clung to it. Two hundred years later, it was still asserted that George had placed personal bravery ahead of “his responsibility to keep alive” as he pushed into the action.31 The internal pressure that was an integral part of his character, whether labeled courage or recklessness, had played a part in his death.
By early August, rumors of George’s death were reaching the Howe family through the newspapers.32 Yet rumors were not always credible—back in 1755, the newspapers had even peddled rumors that Richard had been killed when he took the Alcide.33 The family could only sit and wait. Official confirmation reached the government in the third week of August, and word spread quickly. Lady Howe and her daughters were sent a detailed account of George’s last moments, written by eyewitness Captain Alexander Moneypenny of the 55th. It was Moneypenny who took charge of the remains; George was to have rested in the family vault at Langar, but the intense heat of that New England summer meant that he was buried at St. Peter’s Church in Albany, New York. Only his personal effects went home with his servant Thomas.34
William Pitt was distraught. “The loss of Lord Howe afflicts me with more than a public sorrow,” he wrote to his brother-in-law George Grenville, who was later to play a leading role in Britain’s attempts to tax her American colonies. “He was, by the universal voice of army and people, a character of ancient times: a complete model of military virtue in all its branches. I have the sad task of imparting this cruel event to a brother that loves him most tenderly, because he has himself all the same virtues.”35 Richard, now Commodore Howe, the brother in question, was conducting raids along the French coast and did not hear of George’s fate until his flagship, HMS Essex, anchored in Portland Roads in Dorset on August 25.36
Richard had scant time to grieve for his lost brother. The Duke of Newcastle, as usual full of political intrigue, lost no time in pressuring the new Lord Howe to take George’s parliamentary seat at Nottingham. He was “extreamly concern’d” at the death of George Lord Howe, wrote the duke, before hurrying on to his point. Would Richard be willing to vacate his seat at Dartmouth and undergo a by-election for the Nottingham seat left absent by the death of George? Newcastle could not promise success, but he would do his utmost.37 Even in the face of family tragedy, he could not stop his compulsive politicking.
Richard had been elected MP for the seaport town of Dartmouth the previous year, while he was cruising the Western Approaches of the English Channel. It had been the new administration of Pitt and the Duke of Devonshire, formed on the heels of Newcastle’s resignation in 1756, that had recommended him to the borough. It made no difference that Richard was at sea fighting for his country at the time, for he was elected unopposed.38 Now, a year later, Newcastle was back in office, and, with the news of George’s death, he saw a chance to finally help his faithful friend John Plumptre gain a seat in Parliament. Plumptre could have Dartmouth, he reasoned, and Richard could replace his deceased brother in Nottingham. That would make “every thing easy,” thought the duke happily.39
Even in the midst of her bereavement, Lady Charlotte Howe was too quick for Newcastle. The corporation of Nottingham had turned to the grieving mother rather than the duke to name George’s successor, and she had chosen William. She informed Newcastle of her preference, politely hoping it would have “yr Grace’s Countenance.” Then, in a tactic that did credit to her mentor, Lady Pembroke, she gave the duke a mere week to respond before publishing her own choice in the newspaper, claiming she was obliged to succumb to pressure from the “unanimous, requests I have received from Nottingham, to declare my Son.” She flattered herself that she had his grace’s approbation. She did not have it, of course—Newcastle thought himself “extremely ill-used” by the town of Nottingham, and he thought the Howes aimed for “too much, to bring in a younger Brother for such a town as Nottingham.”40
Lady Howe’s tactic of using the media to outmaneuver her political opponent was so unusual a step for a Georgian lady that it received widespread notice. Indeed, her one brief foray into the public eye is what she is best remembered for today. Her letter to the voters of Nottingham was succinct, but with a personal touch:
As Lord Howe is now absent upon the public service, and Lt.-Col. Howe is with his regiment at Louisburg, it rests upon me to beg the favour of your votes and interests, that Lt.-Col. Howe may supply the place of his late brother as your representative in parliament.
Permit me, therefore, to implore the protection of every one of you, as the mother of him whose life has been lost in the service of his country.
Charlotte Howe41
As usual, Horace Walpole waxed sarcastic over the affair: “I was really touched with my Lady Howe’s advertisement, though I own at first it made me laugh, for seeing an address to the voters for Nottingham signed Charlotte Howe, I concluded (they are so manly a family), that Mrs Howe, who rides a fox chase and dines at the table d’hote at Grantham, intended to stand for member of parliament.”42 The “Mrs Howe” meant by Walpole was Caroline, a manly enough female, in his opinion, to pass for the opposite sex. Lady Howe’s action was unfeminine in his eyes, and he took the opportunity to include Caroline in his sneer at this family of women whose forthright dispositions he found unattractive.
Walpole’s witticism is sometimes quoted in the history books alongside Lady Howe’s announcement, but in 1758 his feelings did not jibe with those of the rest of the nation at war. Charlotte Howe’s appeal was greeted in the newspaper
s as the natural and becoming act of an afflicted mother; her grief caught the imagination of the public, and inspired poets. In the Scots Magazine, the town of Nottingham was exhorted to “Comfort a mother weeping o’er her son” by selecting William as their representative; “She cannot ask a boon and be deny’d.”43 Another writer set in verse an imaginary family tableau in which all the Howes were gathered round the body of George, laid upon a bier. First Lady Howe indicates “the purple stream” that issues from his wound, reminding her children,
My sons! Your brother dy’d in Honour’s cause,
Obey’d its dictates, and fulfill’d its laws—
She next falls in a faint and the brothers grasp their swords, intent on revenge. The sisters approach George and “Press his cold lips, and kiss his icy hand.” Finally the poet reassures his readers:
Yet boast not, France, of this successful day,
Brave Richard’s acts his brother’s debt shall pay.44
Lady Howe’s assertive foray into a so-called man’s world might have been expected to provoke more criticism like Walpole’s, because the defeats that marked Britain’s first years of the Seven Years’ War had aroused national self-scrutiny and widespread indictments of the nation’s degeneration in heavily gendered terms. Britain was becoming effeminate, emasculated, “a Nation which resembles Women,” and therefore doomed to decline. One symptom of this worrying trend was the intrusion of women into such masculine spheres as politics. But the eighteenth century was also a period when domesticity was becoming celebrated as an English trait; in wartime, mothers, wives, and sisters were privileged to assume a special and almost sacred role on the home front.45 “[W]orthy of a Roman matron, in the virtuous times of the republic,” proclaimed one publication approving Lady Howe’s advertisement.46
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