Canada - Sir John George Bourinot (thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

a Catholic pretender, and disheartened at the results of the war on the continent. Weary of the struggle and anxious for a breathing space, England deserted Maria Theresa and made peace with France.


XVI.


THE STRUGGLE FOR DOMINION IN THE GREAT VALLEYS OF NORTH AMERICA--PRELUDE.

(1748-1756.)

The map that is placed at the beginning of this chapter outlines the ambitious designs conceived by French statesmen soon after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. We see the names of many posts and forts intended to keep up communications between Canada and Louisiana, and overawe the English colonies then confined to a relatively narrow strip of territory on the Atlantic coast. Conscious of the mistake that they had made in giving up Acadia, the French now claimed that its "ancient limits" did not extend beyond the isthmus of Chignecto--in other words, included only Nova Scotia. Accordingly they proceeded to construct the forts of Gaspereau and Beausejour on that neck of land, and also one on the St. John River, so that they might control the land and sea approaches to Cape Breton from the St. Lawrence where Quebec, enthroned on her picturesque heights, and Montreal at the {222} confluence of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, held the keys to Canada. The approaches by the way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu were defended by the fort of St. John near the northern extremity of the lake, and by the more formidable works known as Fort Frederick or Crown Point--to give the better known English name--on a peninsula at the narrows towards the south. The latter was the most advanced post of the French until they built Fort Ticonderoga or Carillon on a high, rocky promontory at the head of Lake Sacrement, afterwards called Lake George by General Johnson--a sheet of water always famed for its picturesque charms. At the foot of this lake, associated with so many memorable episodes in American history, General Johnson, a clever, ambitious Irishman, a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, in 1755, erected Fort William Henry, about fourteen miles from Fort Edward or Lyman, at the great carrying place on the upper waters of the Hudson. Returning to the St. Lawrence and the lakes, we find Fort Frontenac or Cataraqui at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, where the old city of Kingston now stands. Within the limits of the present city of Toronto, La Galissonniere built Fort Rouille as an attempt to control the trade of the Indians of the North, who were finding their way to the English fort at Choueguen (Oswego), which had been commenced with the consent of the Iroquois by Governor Burnet of New York and was now a menace to the French dominion of Lake Ontario. At the other extremity of this lake was Fort Niagara, the key to the West.

At Detroit, Mackinac, and Sault Ste. Marie the French continued to hold possession of the Great Lakes and the country to the west and south. Their communications, then, between the West and Quebec were established, but between the great valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, over which they claimed exclusive rights, there was another valley which became of importance in the execution of their scheme of continental dominion. In the years succeeding the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the English colonists awakened to the importance of the valley of the Ohio, and adventurous frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already forcing their way into its wilderness, when France's ambition barred the way to their further progress. That astute Canadian, Governor La Galissonniere, in 1749, recognised the importance of the Ohio in relation to the Illinois and Mississippi, and sent Celoron, a captain in the French service, to claim possession of the valley of the former river and its tributaries. This officer made a long and enterprising journey, in the course of which he affixed at different points the arms of France to trees, and buried leaden plates bearing the inscription, that they were memorials of the "renewal of the possession of the Ohio and all its affluents" originally established by arms and treaties, particularly those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle. Under the instructions of Governor Duquesne, who possessed all the sagacity of La Galissonniere, forts were established at Presqu'ile (Erie) and on French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany. Virginians saw with dismay the entrance {224} of the French into a region on which they were now casting a longing eye. Their government had secured from the Iroquois a doubtful deed which gave them, as they urged, a title to the Great West, and a company was even formed to occupy the Ohio. In 1754 the English commenced the construction of a fort at the forks of the Ohio, but it was easily captured by Contrecoeur, who completed and renamed it in honour of the Governor of Canada, Duquesne. Washington, who now first appears in American history, was defeated by Chevalier de Villiers at Fort Necessity, a mere intrenchment at Great Meadows, and the French held entire possession of the Ohio valley, where no English trader or pioneer dared show himself. By 1755 the French dominion was complete from the Ohio to the Illinois, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, so far as a slender line of communication by means of widely separated posts and settlements could make it so. On the St. Joseph, the Maumee, the Wabash, and the Illinois, there were small forts. Fort Chartres in the Illinois country was the only post of any thorough construction. At Cahokia, opposite the modern city of St. Louis, and at Kaskaskia, at the junction of the river of that name with the Mississippi, there were small and relatively prosperous French villages. In Louisiana the French had the towns of Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans, and a few other settlements, where the African blacks far outnumbered the whites. That colony had had many difficulties to surmount before it could be considered established. Wars with the Natchez and Chickasaws {225} had been constant. Crozat's experiment had been followed by the establishment of the Mississippi or Western Company, which was to develop gold mines, that never existed except in the imaginations of its reckless promoter, John Law, a Scotchman. When the Mississippi bubble burst, and so many thousands were ruined in France, Louisiana still continued under the control of the company, which was eventually obliged to give up its charter after heavy expenditures which had produced very small results, and the colony became a royal province. With its chequered future must be always associated the name of the Canadian Bienville, who was for some years its governor and justly earned the title of "Father of Louisiana." Insignificant as was its progress, France prized its possession, and had she been alive to her opportunities she might have colonised it with Huguenots and made it a power in the conflict between herself and England in America.

France, busy with her ambitious designs in Europe, gave but a meagre and too often half-hearted support to the men who had dreams of founding a mighty empire in America. When France and England met for the great struggle on that continent, the thirteen colonies had reached a population of nearly a million and a quarter of souls, exclusive of the negroes in the South, while the total number of the people in Canada and Louisiana did not exceed eighty thousand. In wealth and comfort there was the same disproportion between the French and English colonies. In fact at the time of the last {226} war, Canadian commerce was entirely paralysed, farms neglected, and the towns barely able to live. In 1757 food was so scarce in Quebec and Montreal that the soldiers and people had to use horse flesh. The combined forces of Canadian militia and regular troops were always much inferior in number to the British and colonial armies when united for the invasion of Canada, with the support of a powerful fleet; but the great strength of the French colony lay in the natural barriers between the English colonies and the keys to New France, Quebec, and Montreal, and in the skill with which the approaches by way of Lake Champlain had been defended by forts at every important point. If the French force was insignificant in number, it was, as a rule, skilfully managed, and in the early part of the struggle the English had no commander to compare with Montcalm for military genius. In some respects the French Canadians were more manageable in war than the English colonists. No legislative bodies existed in Canada to interfere with and thwart the plans and orders of military commanders, but the whole Canadian people acted as a unit to be moved and directed at the will of the King's officers. The Indian tribes from Acadia to the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Illinois, were, with the exception of the Five Nations, always friendly to the French since the days of Champlain--the warm allies of a people who fraternised naturally with them; and it would have been an unhappy day for the English colonists had eighty or a hundred thousand Canadians been able to arm and, under the skilful {227} generalship of Montcalm, swoop down with their savage allies on the English colonial settlements. But the French of Canada were never able, as a rule, to do more than harass by sudden raids and skirmishes--by a system of _petite guerre_, or petty warfare--the English of America, and at no time in colonial history was the capture of Boston or of New York actually attempted by a land force from Canada, though it was suggested more than once. At the outbreak of the war the Mohawks were the only Indian tribe on whom the English could place much dependence, and that was largely owing to the energy and discretion of Sir William Johnson, who had long lived in their country and gained not only their confidence but even their affection. The tribes in the Ohio valley had been won by the success of the French in driving out the Virginians, while in the further west the Foxes and other communities who had been unfriendly to the French had been beaten into submission--the Foxes in fact almost destroyed--by the raids of the French and their Indian allies. The great current of active thought and enterprise which develops a nation was always with the English colonies, and though large schemes of ambition stimulated the energies of the bold and adventurous men to whom the destinies of France were entrusted from the days of La Salle to those of Montcalm, their ability to found a new empire in America under the lilies of France was ever hindered by the slow development of the French settlements, by the incapacity of the King and his ministers in France to grasp the importance of the situation on this {228} continent, and by their refusal to carry out the projects of men like La Galissonniere, who at once recognised the consequences of such neglect and indifference, but found no one ready to favour his scheme of establishing large settlements of French peasantry in Canada and Louisiana. France, we see now, had her great opportunity in America, and lost it forever at Quebec in 1759.

Before we proceed to the record of the events which led to the conquest of Canada, it is necessary that we should briefly review the history of the period which elapsed between the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and the commencement of the Seven Years' War. When English statesmen were informed of the mistake they had made in restoring Cape Breton to France with such reckless haste, they began to reflect