Flight of the Eagle. Conrad Black
his last attempt to seize territory directly from Maria Theresa. While France fenced with the Hanoverians, Frederick turned against Russia, which had occupied East Prussia, around Königsberg. Frederick drew a bloody battle with the Russians at Zorndorf in August 1758, but the Russians withdrew. In September the Prussians failed to expel the Swedes from Prussia, though Frederick did deflect them from Berlin, which was their target. In October, Frederick was again bested by Maria Theresa’s army, though narrowly, in Saxony, but compelled her withdrawal from Saxony at the end of the year. Pitt’s European strategy worked well in 1758, as Prussia and Hanover were magnets to the powers of the French-led coalition, and absorbed the blows of all, leaving Pitt almost free to bulk up his overseas strategy.
6. THE WAR IN AMERICA, 1758
In America, Loudoun had a dismal start to the year, and was horrified at the uncooperativeness of the colonial assemblies, who, while resisting his heavy-handed tyranny, recognized the French threat sufficiently to group ever more closely together, naming commissioners to meet and agree on force levels. Loudoun wrote Pitt on February 14, 1758, announcing what he represented as virtually a usurpation in America of the powers of the Crown by the collaboration of the New England governors. He summoned the governors to meet with him at Hartford a few days after writing Pitt, and revealed his campaign plans for the year: the now customary menu for new attacks on Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, on Fort Carillon on Lake Champlain (Ticonderoga), and on Fort Frontenac at the mouth of Lake Ontario, near the modern Kingston. These plans were then lengthily debated in the Massachusetts Assembly, to the assured knowledge of the French.
This was the state of disorder Loudoun’s bungling had created when the genius of Pitt revealed itself in letters delivered March 10 and obviously written before Loudoun’s complaints to him of near-insurrection in his letter of February 14. Pitt sacked Loudoun and replaced him with Major General James Abercromby, “to repair the Losses and Disappointments of the last inactive and unhappy Campaign,” and ordered that colonial officers would henceforth enjoy the same rank in the British forces, and the British government would undertake the cost of equipping the colonial forces to a serious standard, in furtherance of an “Irruption into Canada.”5 This was a series of giant leaps forward. The Massachusetts legislature, which had been balkily debating Loudoun’s request for 2,128 men for weeks (and had, in effect refused him), agreed by voice vote on March 11, 1758, to raise 7,000 men. Within a month, the colonies had voted to raise 23,000 men for Abercromby. Only Maryland, divided by other issues, temporarily failed to increase its militia. As the colonies had over 1.5 million people (counting about 150,000 slaves), these levies of forces could be considerably extended, and given the preeminence of the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic, France was not going to be able to maintain a military balance in America. The combination of Pitt’s enlightened policies and the French-Indian outrage at Fort William Henry the previous summer had stirred what amounted to national sentiment in the Thirteen Colonies. This would not subside, and was to endure and grow into a world-shaking historic force.
So also had American affection for Britain been stimulated. The problem with the colonists, which Braddock and Loudoun had not understood, was not that they were such slackers but that there was little unemployment or surplus labor in the colonies, because of the prosperity of agriculture and the requirements for growing trades in the towns to service a growing population settled ever more extensively. As a result, military service for minimal pay, as was the European norm, was not only an uncompetitive living financially but had been a long-term commitment to thankless servitude to overbearing and often corrupt British officers. At a stroke, Pitt had promised pay-levels equivalent to civilian work and the promotion of American officers, for a limited enlistment, in a holy crusade to crush the French and the Indians once and for all. It was an irresistible package to take advantage of the colonies’ demographic advantage over French Canada of more than 15 to one. It was inspired policy, but it also reflected Pitt’s complete lack of interest in administration. It was going to be expensive and was going to whet the autonomist appetites of the locals, but these were delayed reactions that would be dealt with after the immediate French threat had been excised.
The new British commander, Abercromby, was just an undistinguished conduit. Pitt brought in with him as army and navy chiefs of staff Field Marshal Lord Ligonier, and Admiral Lord Anson. Ligonier was 77 in 1757, and had served with distinction in heavy combat in every British war of the eighteenth century, starting with his close proximity to Marlborough in the last great battles against the armies of Louis XIV. He is generally reckoned the greatest British field commander between Marlborough and Wellington. Anson was one of the Royal Navy’s great reformers, after a distinguished career as a combat serving officer, and he and Ligonier worked very smoothly together. Pitt told Ligonier he wanted young, aggressive officers without political influence. He wanted men who would fight to make their careers and achieve position and renown, and who would be dependent on him, Pitt, and not constantly scheming and trading with prominent members of Parliament or the entourage of the royal family.
Ligonier selected accordingly for the four missions that had been the ambitions of succeeding British commanders since before the war officially began. Jeffery Amherst, a 40-year-old colonel and regimental commander, was promoted to “Major General in America” to command the expedition against Louisbourg, assisted by the 31-year-old Lieutenant Colonel James Wolfe. The attack on Fort Duquesne was to be conducted by a 50-year-old Scottish doctor, Brigadier John Forbes; Ticonderoga (Fort Carillon) and Fort Frontenac were to be taken by the 33-year-old acting brigadier, Viscount Howe (though Abercromby himself was the nominal commander). Pitt had strengthened the forces in accord with his plan: 14,000 men under Amherst in the attack on Louisbourg; 25,000 men for the attacks on Ticonderoga and Frontenac and the “Irruption into Canada”; and Forbes had 7,000 men for the attack on Fort Duquesne.
Counting the militia of every able-bodied male between the ages of 16 and 60 (except for the numerous priesthood), Montcalm had 25,000 men in total, though the real total at any time was less than that, or all secular civilian occupations would have been denuded. The Indians, traditionally a powerful French ally, had vanished, either from smallpox, detection of the shifting balance of power, or anger at the debacle following the fall of Fort William Henry. Montcalm thus reaped the worst of two harvests: the spirit of vengeance of both the outraged English and the, as they considered themselves, betrayed Indians. He was also suffering from acute shortages of food, due to a poor harvest, and a shortage of some munitions. Montcalm’s problems were further aggravated by the divisions of the civil administration, led by the governor, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, and the financial director, or Intendant, François Bigot, and particularly the corrupt practices of Bigot, who held that office from 1744 on and had embezzled an immense fortune.
Gravely compounding French disadvantages, Louis XV had lost interest in colonial matters and was particularly tired of the military costs of Canada, which did not return him much. The fur trade was no possible justification for such a vast effort, and the French had much less natural disposition for overseas adventure than Britain, a relatively poor island nation with seafaring conducted along its entire perimeter. Pitt was able to blockade the French Mediterranean fleet at Gibraltar, and many of the Atlantic ports, and Boscawen had raised appreciably his interdiction of arriving French ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There were only two avenues for breaking into Canada and strangling the French presence up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, which required disposing of Louisbourg first, or from New York past Ticonderoga-Carillon and Lake Champlain toward Montreal. Pitt and Ligonier had prepared a heavy blow at each door.
The first test was Abercromby and Howe’s move on Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga). They set up their headquarters on the recently smoldering ruins of Fort William Henry and amassed 16,000 men for the assault. They arrived by water, in a thousand small craft, and landed four miles from the French fort on July 5. Unfortunately, Howe was killed by a retreating French reconnaissance sniper, and Abercromby lacked the energy for what followed. Montcalm had arrived at Carillon and found it desperately under-prepared, in men and supplies and the state of the fortifications, to cope with an attack. He built concealed trenches and elevated gun emplacements, and moved some of his 3,600 men forward. Abercromby did not trouble to train his artillery on the fort, and ordered a charge uphill at the French on July 8, a thousand light troops followed by 7,000 Redcoats in parade precision, to the roll of drums and the skirl of bagpipes. The French held