Late one evening Loïs was startled by an Indian youth creeping round the house. Going out to him, he gave her a folded paper, which proved to be a letter from Charles. It ran thus:—
“Yes, Loïs, I have found the boy, and I have placed him in safety in the Ursuline Convent in Quebec, with Mercèdes Montcalm. When the war is over, if you will have him he shall be conveyed to you; at present it would be impossible to do so with any safety. After my assurance to you that I would separate myself from the Indians, you will be surprised to hear that at General Montcalm’s entreaty I have retained my command. He represented to me, and I think justly, that I had no right for any private consideration, any personal quarrel, to bring disunion into his army, which, by throwing up my Indian command, and attaching myself to the Canadian contingent, I should most assuredly do. It would be a breach of honour. My first engagement was made to him. The Indians are only held in check by my influence; if that were removed, their cruelty and licence would be unbounded.
“All this I know to be true, and therefore I have decided not to inflict further wrong on others; what is done I must abide by. Bitterly as I deplore the past, at the present moment I feel bound to those who, knowing nothing of my private life, have placed confidence in me. It cannot last long. General Wolfe is pushing on towards Quebec, but our positions are strong. It is now July. In less than three months the winter will force the English to retreat, probably to return to England; the Indians will then disperse and I shall be released. In the meantime, I am almost face to face with Roger. I am stationed with General Levis on the heights of Montmorenci, and I have every reason to believe that Roger, with his Rangers, is in the forest, trying to discover a ford across the river. We are on the same search. If it be so, we can scarcely do otherwise than meet one day. Pray for us, Loïs, and that this cruel war may end, and that we may once more all dwell together in peace!
“Your loving brother,”Charles Langlade.“P.S.—An Indian will be the bearer of this letter; you may trust him to send me back news of what is going on at the Marshes. I am watching over you; you need fear no fresh aggression.”
The question of this ford, alluded to in the above letter, was of great importance, and it was only discovered after many days of close watching by the French. Early one morning, General Levis’s aide-de-camp, a Scotchman, appeared in his tent bringing with him a peasant, who explained that he had crossed a ford a few hours earlier.
“Then you shall serve us as guide,” said Levis, and he told off eleven thousand Canadians under their officer, Repentigny, with orders to intrench themselves opposite the ford. Charles Langlade, with four hundred Indians, went in advance, crossed the ford, and discovered the English in the forest; not considering himself sufficiently strong to attack, he returned and told Repentigny, who sent to Levis, who again sent to Vaudreuil!
The Indians, thinking they would be baulked of their prey, became mutinous at the delay, and Langlade found it impossible to restrain them; they declared that if he would not lead them, they would attack the Rangers without him, and, to avoid this, he recrossed the ford.
So savage was their onset that they drove the Rangers back on the regulars, who, however, stood their ground and repulsed the Indians with considerable loss. Nevertheless, they carried off thirty-six scalps. Montcalm and Vaudreuil determined to remain on the defensive; the English were powerless to injure them. Wolfe’s position was a dangerous one; his army was separated into three parts, at such distances that it would have been impossible for any one of them to come to the assistance of the other.
The deep and impassable Montmorenci flowed between the two camps, but from the cliffs on either side a gunshot might easily reach and hit a man.
The Canadians were also growing daily more and more dispirited. They were ready for active service, but the inaction to which they were condemned tried their patience severely.
It was summer-time. The harvest was at hand, and the militia men thought of the crops waiting to be gathered in. Many deserted and went home to their villages, notwithstanding the exhortations of their priests; what was found most efficacious to keep them from so doing was the Governor’s threat to let the Indians loose upon any who should waver in their allegiance.
But in the midst of all these difficulties it was the characters of the men who stood at the helm which filled those around them, and indeed their enemies, with admiration.
Montcalm’s career in Canada was a struggle against an inexorable destiny. He bore hunger, thirst, and fatigue without a murmur, caring for his soldiers, but with no thought for himself. In the midst of general corruption he stood forth immaculate, having but one thought, the good of the colony; the savages themselves declared they learnt from him patience in suffering.
A story is told of an Indian chief, when presented to Montcalm, expressing his astonishment that a man who was capable of such great deeds should be so diminutive in stature.
“Ah! how small thou art!” he exclaimed; then added, “but I see reflected in thy eyes the height of the oak and the vivacity of the eagle.”
His own soldiers and his officers worshipped him, but such men as the Governor Vaudreuil and his satellites, Bigot, Cadet, and the rest, both hated and feared him, as the evil man hates and fears the just one.
In the opposite camp a dying man held sway. James Wolfe knew that he was doomed; and his heart sank within him as the days went by, and at the end of July he found himself no nearer taking Quebec than upon the first day on which he landed. He could not move Montcalm to attack. On the 31st of July he made a desperate attempt on the French camp, on the heights of Montmorenci; but notwithstanding acts of the most daring courage, the English were driven back with enormous loss. The blow was such a severe one that Wolfe, thoroughly disheartened, meditated fortifying the Île-aux-Coudres, and then sailing for England with the remainder of his army, to return the following year. But the following year! could he even reckon on a month of life? and he had so hoped, when he accepted his office from William Pitt, to return triumphant, having blotted out and repaired the faults of his predecessors. Imbued with an ardent love of glory, what must have been the feelings of such a man at the prospect of issuing the order for the army he had expected to lead to victory to sail homewards—if not conquered, at least foiled! He could not make up his mind to such a step as long as there still remained the shadow of a chance.
In the middle of August he issued another proclamation, couched in the following terms:—
“Seeing that the people of Canada have shown so little appreciation of my mercy, I am resolved to listen no longer to the sentiments of humanity which have so far ruled me. It is a cause of bitter sorrow to me to be obliged even remotely to imitate the acts of barbarity perpetrated by the Canadians and Indians; yet in justice to myself and my army, I feel bound to chastise the Canadian people. From henceforth therefore any village or settlement which offers resistance to British rule will be razed to the ground.”
The churches were to be respected, and women and children treated with due honour. “If any violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished with death.”
The Rangers and Light Infantry were charged to carry out these orders, and soon on the sunny plains around Quebec flames and smoke arose from many a farmhouse and peaceful village, and the population went forth in flocks, victims of the scourge of war. The Governor Vaudreuil wrote despatches home in which he dilated at great length upon the barbarity of the English, utterly ignoring the fact that for years past he had sent his savages the length and breadth of the English colonies to waste and murder at will, without regard to either age or sex. Quebec was itself greatly injured; many families had forsaken the city, and taken refuge at Pointe-aux-Trembles, some eighteen miles up the river on the north shore. Colonel Carleton landed here with six hundred men, and took upwards of a hundred ladies, old men, and children prisoners. They were conducted to Wolfe’s camp, where they were courteously treated, the ladies being invited to dine at his table, and the following day they were sent under escort back to Quebec.
The general aspect of affairs grew daily more and more serious for English and French alike. Dysentery and fever broke out in the English camp. On the French side the Canadians were deserting in great numbers, and food was becoming daily so scarce that the rations had to be again and again reduced. English ships prevented food arriving from Montreal by the river, and the conveyance by land was both slow and expensive. In Quebec there was real suffering.
To add to the English troubles, General Wolfe became so seriously ill that it was feared the end could not be far off. He was utterly prostrate, and could only at times rouse himself to attend to business. But in his own mind he was maturing long-conceived plans; and when at last an alleviation to his sufferings had been obtained, he dictated a letter to Brigadier-Generals Monckton, Townshend, and Murray, laying three different plans for attacking the enemy before them. They answered that they considered none of them feasible, but proposed placing part of the English army between Quebec and its means of supply, thus forcing Montcalm either to fight or surrender. Wolfe accepted this alternative; but he was utterly dependent even for the power to act upon his physician.
“I know you cannot cure me,” he said; “but pray make me up so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty. That is all I ask.”
“I will do my best,” answered the physician; and he so far succeeded, that by the first days of September Wolfe was able to mount his horse and show himself to his men. But the difficulty still remained unsolved. How could they land the troops so as to surprise the French and approach Quebec? As Montcalm had said, only by treason could it be accomplished.