The History of the Thirteen Colonies of North America 1497-1763

"Gentlemen," said he, "I would sooner have written that poem than take Quebec."

The landing was successfully accomplished, the guard at the top was overpowered, and before Montcalm knew that the English had left their camp, four thousand five hundred men were standing in that "thin red line" upon the Heights of Abraham. The gallant Montcalm did what he could, and with surprising energy collected his troops and led them against the English. The French fired time and again upon Wolfe's men, but they stolidly awaited their advance until they could see the whites of their eyes and then let loose upon them a withering fire. The white coats of the French regulars and the gay costumes of the French Canadian trappers were ready targets and they reeled and fell. Wolfe then ordered the assault, and with a second volley the whole army charged, Wolfe leading his grenadiers. After receiving a slight wound, a fatal bullet singled out that gallant man, and he fell, unnoticed for the moment save by four of his officers, who tenderly carried him to the rear of the advancing host. "They run! They run!" cried one of the officers. "Who run?" said Wolfe. "The French," they replied. "God be praised, I die in peace."

Montcalm was also mortally wounded, and just before the city actually capitulated he passed away, happy that he should not witness the surrender. Montcalm, like Wolfe, was a hero and a patriot, but whereas Wolfe gained the love and everlasting memory of a grateful country and Empire, Montcalm's name was dragged down by unworthy men who never understood his burning zeal, who had none of his ambition for a glorious French Empire in the West. Wolfe's "star had only just arisen. For a moment something like a cloud seemed to have obscured its very dawn; when suddenly bursting like a meteor across the whole horizon of war and politics, it vanished amid a blaze of glory as splendid in a sense and as lasting as that of Nelson himself. It seemed, in truth, as if a great leader had been found and lost in a single moon."[303]

General Murray was left in command of Quebec to pass one of the most trying winters ever undergone by a garrison which was without proper clothing or supplies. At no great distance was a very capable leader, Lévis, plotting to recover the city, which he very nearly succeeded in doing, by defeating Murray outside the walls at the battle of St Foy, on April 28, 1760. The French general, however, lost his opportunity by not striking at the city itself when the garrison was confused by the defeat. Murray was saved by the timely appearance of the British fleet on May 15, and Lévis retreated. All that was now left to be done to complete the conquest of Canada and the salvation of the Thirteen Colonies from French attack was a final advance upon Montreal. Murray was the first to make a move in July; while Haviland advanced down the Richelieu River with three thousand five hundred men, including Rogers and his New Englanders. Amherst's army had already collected at Schenectady, but its progress was retarded by the slow arrival of the colonial contingent of about five thousand men. The forces at last combined before Montreal; and on September 8, just a year after Wolfe's splendid victory, the last stronghold of New France capitulated to the combined forces of England and the Thirteen Colonies.

According to Lord Chesterfield the acquisition of Canada cost the English nation four score millions. No one at the present day can think that the possession of the great Dominion, then regarded as "a few acres of snow," was not worth twenty times the sum. By the Treaty of Paris, 1763, Louis XV. ceded "in full right Canada with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton and all other islands and coasts in the gulf and river of St Lawrence." The French had done their best, ever since the great voyage of Jacques Cartier in 1534, to build up a new French Empire in the West. They had failed, partly because of the fallacious principles of the French colonial system, but particularly for two reasons. The first was the absolute exclusion of the Huguenots, whereby the Canadians shut out the very people who would have made the Empire rich and strong; and the second reason was because their dreams were too diffuse, too magnificent, beyond the physical capacity of so small a nation. They proposed to shut within narrow limits a nation twenty times as large in population, far more energetic and industrious, and one which would by the laws of nature overflow into those very valleys and happy hunting-grounds that they had marked out for themselves.

What, then, was the effect of the capture of Canada upon the settlers of the Thirteen Colonies? We stand at the parting of the ways. The Treaty of Paris not only marked the increase of the British dominions beyond the seas, but also carried within it the germ of the future schism within the British Empire. Several of the Thirteen Colonies had for many years been filled with "a spirit of independence, puritan in religion, and republican in politics."[304] Ever since the seventeenth century the people of Massachusetts had kicked against the pricks of the Navigation Act. The danger from the north and the west had undoubtedly had a repressive influence upon the colonists, and had kept them subservient to the English colonial system, which they hated and which was in reality at the root of their disaffection. The Peace of Paris removed all danger from Spain in the south, while the French danger was removed by the victory of Wolfe; and the rising colonies felt themselves as a new race about to start some great venture. They were (they knew it themselves, and the French recognised it most clearly) absolutely free to choose their future. The sagacious Vergennes predicted events that actually occurred. "England," he said, "will soon repent of having removed the only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection. She will call on them to contribute towards supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence."[305] The defeat of New France meant the possibilities of a new nation in the Western hemisphere; and Old France revenged herself for the loss of her would-be Empire by throwing in her lot with those aforetime jealous and jarring Thirteen States. Old France, therefore, though she knew her own Empire was gone, largely assisted to create the new nation, the new people, the United States of America. The Thirteen Colonies had scarcely been taught the lessons of unity by the horrors of Indian barbarities and the French border war; but so much as they had learnt they tried to put into practice at the first Philadelphian Congress, and at the time of the Declaration of Independence. The Treaty of Paris, one of the most important of all colonial treaties, was merely the forerunner of that other great Treaty of Versailles; the former gave to us the vast area now known as the Dominion of Canada; the latter marked the disappearance of England's Thirteen Colonies, and the creation of the United States of America. It would not have been any very great or wonderful prophecy for a statesman, after the Treaty of Paris, to have foretold the rise of that new nation which has grown with such marvellous strides; and it would not have been inappropriate for him to have used the words of the poet in which to describe this great evolution, and say, "Methinks, I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself as a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her like an eagle viewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."

FOOTNOTES:

CHRONOLOGY OF COLONIAL HISTORY