Canada Under Attack

by Jennifer Crump

  We have not as yet any answer to our express’s from England, and it being uncertain whether I shall return this winter, although it is the earnest desire of my soul to be with you and my dear family, I desire to be made willing to submit to him that rules and governs all things well; as to leave this place without liberty. I don’t think I can on any account.11

  Conditions within the fort were nothing short of brutal. The men lived in squalid, filthy conditions in the ruins of the fort. The sickness that had plagued the troops over the cool, wet summer worsened as the weather got colder. Once winter had closed the fort off from any new provisions or relief the sickness worsened.

  Between November and January, 561 English soldiers were buried at Louisbourg, many beneath the floorboards when the ground became too frozen for the survivors to dig graves.12 That number is staggering compared to the total loss of 130 men during the siege: 100 to gunfire and another 30 to disease. By February, Pepperell commanded just 1,000 able-bodied men; the other 1,000 had been felled by sickness or death. The British governor wrote of his time in Louisbourg, “I have struggled hard to weather the winter, which I’ve done thank God, tho was not above three times out of my room for five months … I am convinced I shou’d not live out another winter in Louisbourg.”13 To further compound their troubles, the men received minimal pay and found their protests falling on deaf ears. In one dramatic episode, a group of New Englanders marched to the parade ground without their officers and tossed their weapons down. A British Navy officer, who had witnessed both the conditions at Louisbourg and the protest, remarked that he had always thought the New England men to be cowards but he thought that if they had a pickaxe and a spade they would dig their way to hell and storm it.14

  In March the promised relief finally arrived and the surviving colonists were allowed to return to their families. A small group of them took a souvenir with them: a large iron cross from the cathedral at Louisbourg. Eventually finding its way to Harvard, the Louisbourg Cross remained at the university for nearly 250 years until they finally agreed to permanently loan it to Canada in 1995.

  But in 1746 the battle was still going on, at least in the eyes of the French. On the heels of the British reinforcements a flotilla of French warships had also headed toward Gabarus Bay, intent on retaking the fort and redressing the humiliations suffered at Louisbourg. But luck and weather once again favoured the English colonists. The French fleet was plagued by illness, beset by storms, and harried by the English Navy until it finally gave up and abandoned its mission to retake Louisbourg. The English who were in command of the fort were elated, but their joy soon turned to disgust when news reached them that during the negotiations of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the British had traded Louisbourg back to the French in return for the small fort of Madras in India. Everything the colonists had fought for had been abandoned; the French commanded the mighty fort of Louisbourg once more.

  The French were not able to enjoy the fort for long. By 1757 they were back at war with the British, and both the Americans and the British had once again set their sights on Louisbourg. They started slow; first isolating Louisbourg by confining the first fleet of reinforcements sent to the city and then by defeating a second fleet sent out to rescue the first. A third fleet finally made its way to the island but its commander, worried about a possible invasion, decided to lead his ships to the relative safety of Quebec. His concerns were justified. The French had made some important improvements to the fortress. They were no longer exposed along the swampy east; instead they were protected by lines of guns and trenches, fronted by a further defence called an abatis, felled trees that were sharpened and pointed towards the advancing enemy. Despite the French having strengthened the fortress it was still a tempting target because it controlled access to Quebec and the rest of French Canada.

  With Quebec City as the final target, the British planned two major campaigns. The first, involving over 15,000 men, was launched against Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, while Major-General Jeffrey Amherst led a 12,000 man force toward Louisbourg. Among the officers that Amherst selected to launch the attack on Louisbourg was a young James Wolfe, who would go on to lead the invasion of Quebec City and end French hegemony in North America forever. While the British locked down all of the ports from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, in order to keep the invasion secret, Amherst gathered his troops in the newly built Fort George in Halifax. Within weeks they were joined by nearly 14,000 sailors and marines. Within Louisbourg, a force of barely 7,500, and 4,000 civilians, waited nervously for the inevitable invasion.15

  As dawn broke on June 1, 1758, the shocked Louisbourg sentries finally spotted the first sails of the massive invasion force anchored in Gabarus Bay. Rough seas kept them at anchor but the swells calmed and in the early hours of June 8 the entire fleet doused their lights while 2,000 soldiers slipped into the small bateaux that would carry them to shore. They bobbed in the water, waiting for the signal that would launch a three-pronged attack on three French beaches.

  At 4:00 a.m., the ships began to fire on Louisbourg and the fortress answered with the steady beat of drums sounding the générale — the call to arms. Most of the French forces turned a steady, terrifying barrage against the tiny boats. Several boats overturned and the soldiers, weighted down by their heavy uniforms and packs, sank to the bottom of the bay. As a horrified solider looked on, “One boat in which were Twenty Grenadiers and an officer was stove, and Every one Drowned.”16 Standing at the bow of his boat, his red cape flapping in the wind, General Wolfe made a tempting target. But the French held their fire until the boats were well within musket range, and then let loose a furious barrage that left Wolfe desperately waving the accompanying boats back with his cane. They attempted to turn around amidst heavy fire from the French and rough waves that pushed them back toward the shore.

  It seemed that the massive invasion, so carefully planned, was going to end in unmitigated disaster. But then, as occasionally happens in war, fate intervened and saved the day for the British and colonials. Officers aboard three of the boats spied a rocky outcropping beyond the range of the French guns and turned toward it. Wolfe immediately ordered the ships nearest him to follow and they pulled their boats onto shore beyond the view of the French. The French Governor Augustin de Boschenry de Drucour was stunned to learn that the British and Americans had made land. Instead of launching a counterattack, he elected to pull back. He ordered the Royal Battery destroyed and abandoned. A day later he ordered the Lighthouse Battery destroyed and then withdrew his men into the fortress.

  Wolfe Walking Ashore Through the Surf at Louisbourg.

  Wolfe barely missed a beat. He marched his almost 2,000 strong army around the bay with an eye to taking and rebuilding both the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries so that they could be used against Louisbourg. In the meantime, Amherst kept his own army busy building a road through the sand, bog, and marsh in preparation for an attack by land. In a replay of the 1745 attack, hundreds of men were put to work pulling the massive guns into position. On June 18, the soldiers were startled to hear the sounds of a naval battle occurring within Gabarus Bay. They did not know it then, but de Drucour had attempted to smuggle his wife and several other women out of Louisbourg to the safety of Quebec. Madame de Drucour and her companions were taken from the defeated French ship and returned with honour and consideration to her husband at Louisbourg. Despite the courtesy of the British, for the remainder of the siege Madame de Drucour climbed the fortress ramparts daily to fire three canon shots in honour of the king of France. Amherst was so impressed with the lady’s courage that he sent her a letter and a gift of two pineapples with several messages and letters from captured Frenchmen. Another flag of truce appeared and a basket of wine was delivered to Amherst with the compliments of the governor and his wife. As soon as the wine was delivered the canons roared to life on both sides. Courtesy and compliments aside, there was still a war to be won.

  The defence of Louisbourg must have seemed h
opeless even to the most optimistic of the French troops. But de Drucour refused to surrender, knowing that the longer he held out the less likely it was that the British fleet would move on to Quebec. By the end of June the walls of Louisbourg were crumbling and the city had no defences beyond what was left of them. Then, a British bomb exploded in the magazine on board one of the French ships. As the magazine exploded, sparking a horrific fire, the British continued to pound the ship with cannons and the fire spread to two nearby ships. French soldiers and sailors leapt into the sea, exchanging a fiery death for a watery grave.

  The Expedition Against Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, 1745.

  Five days later the British launched a sneak attack at midnight on two of the last remaining French ships, the Prudent and Bienfaisant. They slipped aboard, released the English prisoners held on the ships and then set fire to the ship’s magazines. Once the French realized what was happening they immediately fired back at the English ships. Within hours, the Prudent was in flames and the Bienfaisant had been sunk.

  To those inside the fortress it must have seemed like the British and Americans were everywhere. Their canons dominated the hills around the city, their ships clogged the bay, British soldiers had taken up key positions in trenches along the perimeter of the city, and a steady barrage of canon fire had wreaked havoc on the city. The British lines had moved up so close that their front lines could pick off the French soldiers one by one on the ramparts above the city. One habitant wrote,

  Not a house in the whole place but has felt the force of their cannonade. Between yesterday morning and seven o’clock to-night from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have fallen inside the town, while at least forty cannon have been firing incessantly as well. The surgeons have to run at many a cry of ‘Ware Shell!’ for fear lest they should share the patients’ fate.17

  Finally de Drucour agreed to sue for peace. The terms were exceedingly humiliating for the French troops, but without them the safety of the civilians could not be ensured. Drucour had to content himself with the knowledge that he had prevented an attack on Quebec City; it was far too late for the British to continue their attack, at least that year. So the French surrendered and de Drucour was shipped as a prisoner to Britain. Louisbourg was once more in British and American hands. The British continued in their attempts to rid the Atlantic coast of French settlements and in 1759 would use Louisbourg as a launching point for an attack on Quebec. That invasion would be Louisbourg’s last. In the 1760s the fort was razed by British soldiers who did not want to see it returned to the French in any future peace treaty.18

  CHAPTER THREE:

  THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC

  With Louisbourg in English hands, the seemingly endless war for control of North America appeared to have shifted in favour of Britain. The next battle would decide the war and pit two of the greatest generals that North America would ever know against one another. Their chosen battleground would be another fortress city: the city of Quebec.

  Quebec was the cornerstone of New France and the lynchpin in the machine that ensured French hegemony in the region. It was there that European ships went to trade and where the furs were sent to be shipped to Europe and elsewhere. From Quebec, adventurers, traders, and soldiers had access to ports extending into the Great Lakes and the fur-rich interior of Canada, and outward to the Atlantic and the ports of Europe. Militarily, the city appeared impenetrable. It was situated on a very narrow portion of the St. Lawrence where the shores stood barely one kilometre apart. The Saint-Charles River curled into the St. Lawrence there, providing a natural haven for ships in the Beauport Bay. The city had been built atop an unassailable series of cliffs, which formed a natural fortress-like barrier between the city and any potential bombardment from the river below. The city itself was divided into two parts: Upper Town and Lower Town. Lower Town contained the piers, shops, and homes of many of the common people and was situated on a plain along the banks of the river. Upper Town was home to the clergy and upper classes, and was located on a high cliff that ran parallel to the river. A thick battery with two heavily fortified gates separated the two parts of the city.

  To land their fatal blow, the British chose James Wolfe, a temperamental career soldier who had honed his craft at the brutal Battle of Culloden. At the age of 13 he received his first post as an officer in his majesty’s navy and soon developed a reputation as a brilliant tactician, somewhat unorthodox soldier, and a man destined for great things. After Louisbourg fell, largely because of Wolfe’s fearless efforts, he lobbied hard for the invasion to be carried on into Quebec. He wrote to his superior, General Amherst:

  [W]e might make an offensive and a destructive war in the Bay of Fundy and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I beg pardon for this freedom, but I cannot look coolly upon the bloody inroads of those hell-hounds the Canadians; and if nothing further is to be done, I must desire leave to quit the army.1

  When Amherst and others refused to move on Quebec as quickly as he would have liked, Wolfe returned to England. Despite being a man plagued by various illnesses, he chafed at inaction. In London he lobbied for another promotion and an assignment to lead an invasion of the fortress of Quebec. Wolfe’s exploits at Louisbourg had captured the imagination of the British public, who had heard nothing of the brutality with which he crushed any resistance from the inhabitants of the Bay of Fundy and the Gaspé. But not everyone was enthused with the idea of Wolfe’s potential as a leader. When it was suggested that he be given command of the Quebec campaign, a story circulated that Wolfe’s superiors considered him mad. “Mad is he?” King George is said to have replied. “Then I hope he bites my other generals.”2

  Wolfe frequently wrote about the imperfections of his character and considered himself quick-tempered and even cruel. “My temper is much too warm,” he wrote in a letter to his mother, “and sudden resentment forces out expressions and even actions that are neither justifiable nor excusable.”3 Yet he had an unflappable loyalty to his country and an immoveable sense of justice and honour. When a superior officer ordered him to shoot a wounded highlander at Culloden he refused, risking his own ambitions, a court martial, and possible hanging rather than violate his own sense of honour. But this same sense of justice would later lead him to condone acts of horrendous violence against citizens who supported the French.

  In February 1759, Wolfe sailed with the British fleet across the Atlantic; with him were some of the nearly 9,000 troops who would form his invasion force.

  Others awaited him in Louisbourg. Nearly one third of his force came from the American colonies, many of them German and Swiss settlers with a considerable number of American backwoodsmen and sharpshooters thrown into the mix. Among the remaining two-thirds were an entertaining mix of British regulars, highlanders, and Irish. Many of the Irish were cast-offs from the regular army, pardoned convicts, and pressed men. The traditionally dressed highlanders included a regiment known to the French as les sauvages sans culottes, a group known particularly for their ferociousness in battle. Regulars were drawn from regiments previously assigned to battlefronts on the European continent and included three regiments from the soldiers assigned to guard Louisbourg during the winter of 1746. Of the latter group, one of Wolfe’s officers wrote, “They made a very shabby appearance and did not trouble themselves much about discipline; nor were they regularly clothed; their officers seemed to be a good deal ashamed.”4 Wolfe was blunter, believing “that no good could be made of them”5 But whatever their faults, Wolfe’s army consisted of the toughest, most experienced and battle hardened troops ever to launch an invasion in Canada.

  The trip across the Atlantic proved slow and rough, particularly for Wolfe, who was prone to seasickness. He arrived in Louisbourg, ill and ill-tempered, and furious to discover that none of the ordered preparations for his invasion had been accomplished. Ice had apparently delayed the small fleet of ships that was to have sailed up the St. Lawrence in advance of the main fleet to capture incoming French ships and prevent reinfo
rcements and supplies from reaching Quebec. Though the ice had prevented the British ships from sailing it had not, Wolfe quickly learned, prevented the French ships from reaching Quebec. When Wolfe arrived in Louisbourg, prepared to launch an immediate invasion, he learned that not only were the French aware of the coming attack, but they had already received both the provisions and the men they would need to withstand a lengthy siege. The hungry, desperate rabble he hoped to face were wellfed and well armed.

  Within Quebec City itself, the mood was generally buoyant. Despite the news that the British were on their way, provisions and reinforcements had arrived. Surely the mighty fortress of Quebec could withstand the assault. But one man feared that the battle might be the last to be fought on French North American soil. Like Wolfe, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, Marquis de Montcalm, was a career soldier. He became an officer at 12 and was wounded no less than five times during a career that led him to French battlefields all over the world. By 1759 he was nearly 50 years old, anxious to resume his retirement, and a reluctant commander of the French forces in the New World. In a letter written in April 1759, Montcalm informed the war minister in France that he fully expected Quebec to fall, if not that year then surely the next.6 The response from the French government was clear. A letter from the minister of war informed Montcalm that it was,

  [N]ecessary that you limit your plans of defense to the most essential points and those most closely connected, so that … each part may be within reach of support and succor from the rest. How small soever may be the space you are able to hold, it is indispensable to keep a footing in North America; for if we lose the country entirely, its recovery will be almost impossible.

  Despite the reluctance with which he accepted his assignment, Montcalm was an honourable and loyal soldier, determined to protect the colony. He pleaded in vain for both substantial reinforcements from France and a shoring up of existing defences within Canada. Both pleas had fallen on deaf ears. France was too consumed by the war on the continent to spare much for its far-off colony. In Canada Montcalm had to negotiate with the colony’s corrupt business manager, Françoise Bigot, and the inept French Governor François-Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil. Bigot’s job was to preserve stores for the colony but his business was in commandeering all the local crops and sending them to France on government ships. Governor de Rigaud would then inform the government that the colony was starving and Bigot’s friends would sell the crops back to the government at a rich profit, to ship back to the very colony they had been stolen from.