if God have willed it, who are you, that you should gainsay Him?"
The affair of Montreal stood, like that of Quebec; New France was
founded, in spite of the sufferings of the early colonists, thanks to
their courage, their fervent enthusiasm, and the support afforded them by
the religious zeal of their friends in Europe.  The Jesuit missionaries
every day extended their explorations, sharing with M. de La Salle the
glory of the great discoveries of the West.  Champlain had before this
dreamed of and sought for a passage across the continent, leading to the
Southern seas and permitting of commerce with India and Japan.  La Salle,
in his intrepid expeditions, discovered Ohio and Illinois, navigated the
great lakes, crossed the Mississippi, which the Jesuits had been the
first to reach, and pushed on as far as Texas.  Constructing forts in the
midst of the savage districts, taking possession of Louisiana in the name
of King Louis XIV., abandoned by the majority of his comrades and losing
the most faithful of them by death, attacked by savages, betrayed by his
own men, thwarted in his projects by his enemies and his rivals, this
indefatigable explorer fell at last beneath the blows of a few mutineers,
in 1687, just as he was trying to get back to New France; he left the
field open after him to the innumerable travellers of every nation and
every language who were one day to leave their mark on those measureless
tracts.  Everywhere, in the western regions of the American continent,
the footsteps of the French, either travellers or missionaries, preceded
the boldest adventurers.  It is the glory and the misfortune of France to
always lead the van in the march of civilization, without having the wit
to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness of her children.
On the unknown roads which she has opened to the human mind and to human
enterprise she has often left the fruits to be gathered by nations less
inventive and less able than she, but more persevering and less perturbed
by a confusion of desires and an incessant renewal of hopes.

The treaty of Utrecht had taken out of French hands the gates of Canada,
Acadia, and Newfoundland.  It was now in the neighborhood of New France
that the power of England was rising, growing rapidly through the
development of her colonies, usurping little by little the empire of the
seas.  Canada was prospering, however; during the long wars which the
condition of Europe had kept up in America, the Canadians had supplied
the king's armies with their best soldiers.  Returning to their homes,
and resuming without an effort the peaceful habits which characterized
them, they skilfully cultivated their fields, and saw their population
increasing naturally, without any help from the mother-country.  The
governors had succeeded in adroitly counterbalancing the influence of the
English over the Indian tribes.  The Iroquois, but lately implacable foes
of France, had accepted a position of neutrality.  Agricultural
development secured to the country comparative prosperity, but money was
scarce, the instinct of the population was not in the direction of
commerce; it was everywhere shackled by monopolies.  The English were
rich, free, and bold; for them the transmission and the exchange of
commodities were easy.  The commercial rivalry which set in between the
two nations was fatal to the French; when the hour of the final struggle
came, the Canadians, though brave, resolute, passionately attached to
France, and ready for any sacrifice, were few in number compared with
their enemies.  Scattered over a vast territory, they possessed but poor
pecuniary resources, and could expect from the mother country only
irregular assistance, subject to variations of gov ernment and fortune as
well as to the chances of maritime warfare and engagements at sea, always
perilous for the French ships, which were inferior in build and in
number, whatever might be the courage and skill of their commanders.
The capture of Louisbourg and of the Island of Cape Breton by the English
colonists, in 1745, profoundly disquieted the Canadians.  They pressed
the government to make an attempt upon Acadia.  "The population has
remained French," they said; "we are ready to fight for our relatives and
friends who have passed under the yoke of the foreigner."  The ministry
sent the Duke of Anville with a considerable fleet; storms and disease
destroyed vessels and crews before it had been possible to attack.  A
fresh squadron, commanded by the Marquis of La Jonquiere, encountered the
English off Cape Finisterre in Spain.  Admiral Anson had seventeen ships,
M. de La Jonquiere had but six; he, however, fought desperately.  "I
never saw anybody behave better than the French commander," wrote the
captain of the English ship Windsor; "and, to tell the truth, all the
officers of that nation showed great courage; not one of them struck
until it was absolutely impossible to manoeuvre."  The remnants of the
French navy, neglected as it had been through the unreflecting economy of
Cardinal Fleury, were almost completely destroyed, and England reckoned
more than two hundred and fifty ships of war.  Neither the successes in
the Low Countries and in Germany nor the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a
serious end to the maritime war; England used her strength to despoil the
French forever of the colonies which she envied them.  The frontiers of
Canada and Acadia had not been clearly defined by the treaties of peace.
Distrust and disquiet reigned amongst the French colonists; the ardor of
conquest fired the English, who had for a long while coveted the valley
of the Ohio and its fertile territories.  The covert hostility which
often betrayed itself by acts of aggression was destined ere long to lead
to open war.  An important emigration began amongst the Acadians; they
had hitherto claimed the title of neutrals, in spite of the annexation of
their territory by England, in order to escape the test oath and to
remain faithful to the Catholic faith; the priests and the French agents
urged them to do more; more than three thousand Acadians left their
fields and their cottages to settle on the French coasts, along the Bay
of Fundy.  Every effort of the French governors who succeeded one another
only too rapidly in Canada was directed towards maintaining the natural
or factitious barriers between the two territories.  The savages, excited
and flattered by both sides, loudly proclaimed their independence and
their primitive rights over the country which the Europeans were
disputing between themselves.  "We have not ceded our lands to anybody,"
they said; "and we have no mind to obey any king."  "Do you know what is
the difference between the King of France and the Englishman?" the
Iroquois was asked by Marquis Duquesne, the then governor of Canada.
"Go and look at the forts which the king had set up, and you will see
that the land beneath his walls is still a hunting-ground, he having
chosen the spots frequented by you simply to serve your need.  The
Englishman, on the other hand, is no sooner in possession of land than
the game is forced to quit, the woods are felled, the soil is uncovered,
and you can scarcely find the wherewithal to shelter yourselves at
night."

The governor of Canada was not mistaken.  Where France established mere
military posts, and as it were landmarks of her political dominion, the
English colonists, cultivators and traders, brought with them practical
civilization, the natural and powerful enemy of savage life.  Already war
was in preparation without regard to the claims of these humble allies,
who were destined ere long to die out before might and the presence of a
superior race.  The French commander in the valley of the Ohio, M. de
Contrecoeur, was occupied with preparations for defence, when he learned
that a considerable body of English troops were marching against him
under the orders of Colonel Washington.  He immediately despatched M. de
Jumonville with thirty men to summon the English to retire and to
evacuate French territory.  At break of day on the 18th of May, 1754,
Washington's men surprised Jumonville's little encampment.  The attack
was unexpected; it is not known whether the French envoy had time to
convey the summons with which he had been charged; he was killed,
together with nine men of his troops.  The irritation caused by this
event precipitated the commencement of hostilities.  A corps of
Canadians, re-enforced by a few savages, marched at once against
Washington; he was intrenched in the plain; he had to be attacked with
artillery.  The future hero of American independence was obliged to
capitulate; the English retired with such precipitation that they
abandoned even their flag.

Negotiations were still going on between London and Versailles, and
meanwhile the governors of the English colonies had met together to form
a sort of confederation against French power in the new world.  They were
raising militia everywhere.  On the 20th of January, 1755, General
Braddock with a corps of regulars landed at Williamsburg, in Virginia.
Two months later, or not until the end of April, in fact, Admiral Dubois
de la Motte quitted Brest with re-enforcements and munitions of war for
Canada.  After him and almost in his wake went Admiral Boscawen from
Plymouth, on the 27th of April, seeking to encounter him at sea.  "Most
certainly the English will not commence hostilities," said the English
cabinet to calm the anxieties of France.

It was only off Newfoundland that Admiral Boscawen's squadron encountered
some French vessels detached from the fleet in consequence of the bad
weather.  "Captain Hocquart, who commanded the _Alcide,_" says the
account of M. de Choiseul, "finding himself within hail of the
_Dunkerque,_ had this question put in English: 'Are we at peace or war?'
The English captain appearing not to understand, the question was
repeated in French.  'Peace! peace!' shouted the English.  Almost at the
same moment the _Dunkerque_ poured in a broadside, riddling the _Alcide_
with balls."  The two French ships were taken; and a few days afterwards,
three hundred merchant vessels, peaceably pursuing their course, were
seized by the English navy.  The loss was immense, as well as the
disgrace.  France at last decided upon declaring war, which had already
been commenced in fact for more than two years.

It was regretfully, and as if compelled by a remnant of national honor,
that Louis XV. had just adopted the resolution of defending his colonies;
he had, and the nation had as well, the feeling that the French were
hopelessly weak at sea.  "What use to us will be hosts of troops and
plenty of money," wrote the advocate Barbier, "if we have only to fight
the English at sea?  They will take all our ships one after another, they
will seize all our settlements in America, and will get all the trade.
We must hope for some division amongst the English nation itself, for the
king personally does not desire war."

The English nation was not divided.  The ministers and the Parliament, as
well as the American colonies, were for war.  "There is no hope of repose
for our thirteen colonies, as long as the French are masters of Canada,"
said Benjamin Franklin, on his arrival in London in 1754.  He was already
laboring, without knowing it, at that great work of American independence
which was to be his glory and that of his generation; the common efforts
and the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war
against France were the first step towards that great coalition which
founded the United States of America.

The union with the mother-country was as yet close and potent: at the
instigation of Mr. Fox, soon afterwards Lord Holland, and at the time
Prime Minister of England, Parliament voted twenty-five millions for the
American war.  The bounty given to the soldiers and marines who enlisted
was doubled by private subscription; fifteen thousand men were thus
raised to invade the French colonies.

Canada and Louisiana together did not number eighty thousand inhabitants,
whilst the population of the English colonies already amounted to twelve
hundred thousand souls; to the twenty-eight hundred regular troops sent
from France, the Canadian militia added about four thousand men, less
experienced but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans of the
campaigns in Europe.  During more than twenty years the courage and
devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day.

Then began an unequal, but an obstinate struggle, of which the issue,
easy to foresee, never cowed or appeased the actors in it.  The able
tactics of M. de Vaudreuil, governor of the colony, had forced the
English to scatter their forces and their attacks over an immense
territory, far away from the most important settlements; the forts which
they besieged were scarcely defended.  "A large enclosure, with a
palisade round it, in which there were but one officer and nineteen
soldiers," wrote the Marquis of Montcalm at a later period, "could not be
considered as a fort adapted to sustain a siege."  In the first campaign,
the settlements formed by the Acadian emigrants on the borders of the Bay
of Fundy were completely destroyed: the French garrisons were obliged to
evacuate their positions.

This withdrawal left Acadia, or neutral land, at the mercy of the
Anglo-Americans.  Before Longfellow had immortalized, in the poem of
Evangeline, the peaceful habits and the misfortunes of the Acadians,
Raynal had already pleaded their cause before history.  "A simple and a
kindly people," he said, "who had no liking for blood, agriculture was
their occupation.

They had been settled in the low grounds, forcing back, by dint of dikes,
the sea and rivers wherewith those plains were covered.  The drained
marshes produced wheat, rye, oats, barley, and maize.  Immense prairies
were alive with numerous flocks; as many as sixty thousand horned cattle
were counted there.  The habitations, nearly all built of wood, were very
commodious, and furnished with the neatness sometimes found amongst our
European farmers in the easiest circumstances.  Their manners were
extremely simple; the little differences which might from time to time
arise between the colonists were always amicably settled by the elders.
It was a band of brothers, all equally ready to give or receive that
which they considered common to all men."

War and its horrors broke in upon this peaceful idyl.

The Acadians had constantly refused to take the oath to England; they
were declared guilty of having violated neutrality.  For the most part
the accusation was unjust; but all were involved in the same
condemnation.

On the 5th of September, 1755, four hundred and eighteen heads of
families were summoned to meet in the church of Grand Pre.  The same
order had been given throughout all the towns of Acadia.  The anxious
farmers had all obeyed.  Colonel Winslow, commanding the Massachusetts
militia, repaired thither with great array.  "It is a painful duty which
brings me here," he said.  "I have orders to inform you that your lands,
your houses, and your crops are confiscated to the profit of the crown;
you can carry off your money and your linen on your deportation from the
province."  The order was accompanied by no explanation; nor did it admit
of any.  All the heads of families were at once surrounded by the
soldiers.  By tens, and under safe escort, they were permitted to visit
once more the fields which they had cultivated, the houses in which they
had seen their children grow up.  On the 10th they embarked, passing, on
their way to the ships, between two rows of women and children in tears.
The young people had shown a disposition to resist, demanding leave to
depart with their families: the soldiers crossed their bayonets.  The
vessels set sail for the English colonies, dispersing over the coast the
poor creatures they had torn away from all that was theirs.  Many
perished of want while seeking from town to town their families, removed
after them from Acadia; the charity of the American colonists relieved
their first wants.  Some French Protestants, who had settled in
Philadelphia after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, welcomed them
as brothers, notwithstanding the difference of their creed; for they knew
all the heart-rending evils of exile.

Much emotion was excited in France by the woes of the Acadians.  In spite
of the declaration of war, Louis XV. made a request to the English
cabinet for permission to send vessels along the coasts of America, to
pick up those unfortunates.  "Our navigation act is against it," replied
Mr. Grenville; "France cannot send ships amongst our colonies."  A few
Acadians, nevertheless, reached France; they settled in the outskirts of
Bordeaux, where their descendants still form the population of two
prosperous communes.  Others founded in Louisiana settlements which bore
the name of Acadia.  The crime was consummated: the religious, pacific,
inoffensive population, which but lately occupied the neutral land, had
completely disappeared.  The greedy colonists, who envied them their
farms and pasturage, had taken possession of the spoil; Acadia was
forever in the power of the Anglo-Saxon race, which was at the same
moment invading the valley of the Ohio.

General Braddock had mustered his troops at Wills Creek, in the
neighborhood of the Alleghany Mountains.  He meditated surprising Fort
Duquesne, erected but a short time previously by the French on the banks
of the Ohio.  The little army was advancing slowly across the mountains
and the forests; Braddock divided it into two corps, and placing himself
with Colonel Washington, who was at that time serving on his staff at the
head of twelve hundred men, he pushed forward rapidly.  "Never," said
Washington afterwards, "did I see a finer sight than the departure of the
English troops on the 9th of July, 1755; all the men were in full
uniform, marching in slow time and in perfect order; the sun was
reflected from their glittering arms; the river rolled its waves along on
their right, and on their left the vast forest threw over them its mighty
shadows.  Officers and soldiers were equally joyous and confident of
success."

Twice the attacking column had crossed the Monongahela by fording; it was
leaving the plain which extended to some distance from Fort Duquesne, to
enter the wood-path, when the advance-guard was all at once brought up by
a tremendous discharge of artillery; a second discharge came almost
immediately from the right.  The English could not see their enemy; they
were confused, and fell back upon General Braddock and the main body of
the detachment who were coming up to their aid.  The disorder soon became
extreme.  The regular troops, unaccustomed to this kind of warfare,
refused to rally, in spite of the efforts of their general, who would
have had them manoeuvre as in the plains of Flanders; the Virginia
militia alone, recurring to habits of forest warfare, had dispersed, but
without flying, hiding themselves behind the trees, and replying to the
French or Indian sharpshooters.

[Illustration: Death of General Braddock----203]

Before long General Braddock received a mortal wound; his staff had
fallen almost to a man; Colonel Washington alone, reserved by God for
another destiny, still sought to rally his men.  "I have been protected
by the almighty intervention of Providence beyond every human
probability," he wrote to his brother after the action.  "I received four
balls in my clothes, and I had two horses killed under me; nevertheless I
came out of it safe and sound, whilst death was sweeping down my comrades
around me."  The small English corps was destroyed; the fugitives
communicated their terror to the detachment of Colonel Dunbar, who was
coming to join them.  All the troops disbanded, spiking the guns and
burning the munitions and baggage; in their panic the soldiers asked no
question save whether the enemy were pursuing them.  "We have been
beaten, shamefully beaten," wrote Washington, "by a handful of French
whose only idea was to hamper our march.  A few moments before the action
we thought our forces almost a match for all those of Canada; and yet,
against every probability, we have been completely defeated and have lost
everything."  The small French corps, which sallied from Fort Duquesne
under the orders of M. de Beaujeu, numbered only two hundred Canadians
and six hundred Indians.  It was not until three years later, in 1758,
that Fort Duquesne, laid in ruins by the defenders themselves, at last
fell into the hands of the English, who gave to it, in honor of the great
English minister, the name of Pittsburg, which is borne to this day by a
flourishing town.

The courage of the Canadians and the able use they had the wits to make
of their savage allies still balanced the fortunes of the war; but the
continuance of hostilities betrayed more and more every day the
inferiority of the forces and the insufficiency of the resources of the
colony.  "The colonists employed in the army, of which they form the
greater part, no longer till the lands they had formerly cleared, far
from clearing new ones," wrote the superintendent of Canada; "the levies
about to be made will still further dispeople the country.  What will
become of the colony?  There will be a deficiency of everything,
especially of corn; up to the present the intention had been not to raise
the levies until the work of spring was over.  That indulgence can no
longer be accorded, since the war will go on during the winter, and the
armies must be mustered as early as the month of April.  Besides, the
Canadians are decreasing fast; a great number have died of fatigue and
disease.  There is no, relying," added the superintendent, "on the
savages save so long as we have the superiority, and so long as all their
wants are supplied."  The government determined to send re-enforcements
to Canada under the orders of the Marquis of Montcalm.

The new general had had thirty-five years' service, though he was not yet
fifty; he had distinguished himself in Germany and in Italy.  He was
brave, amiable, clever; by turns indolent and bold; skilful in dealing
with the Indians, whom he inspired with feelings of great admiration;
jealous of the Canadians, their officers and their governor, M. de
Vaudreuil; convinced beforehand of the uselessness of all efforts and of
the inevitable result of the struggle he maintained with indomitable
courage.  More intelligent than his predecessor, General Dieskau, who,
like Braddock, had fallen through the error of conducting the war in the
European fashion, he, nevertheless, had great difficulty in wrenching
himself from the military traditions of his whole life.  An expedition,
in 1756, against Fort Oswego, on the right bank of Lake Ontario, was
completely successful; General Webb had no time to relieve the garrison,
which capitulated.  Bands of Canadians and Indians laid waste
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  Montcalm wrote to the minister of
war, Rouille, "It is the first time that, with three thousand men and
less artillery, a siege has been maintained against eighteen hundred, who
could be readily relieved by two thousand, and who could oppose our
landing, having the naval superiority on Lake Ontario.  The success has
been beyond all expectation.  The conduct I adopted on this occasion and
the arrangements I ordered are so contrary to the regular rules, that the
boldness displayed in this enterprise must look like rashness in Europe.
Therefore, I do beseech you, monseigneur, as the only favor I ask, to
assure his Majesty that, if ever he should be pleased, as I hope, to
employ me in his own armies, I will behave differently."

The same success everywhere attended the arms of the Marquis of Montcalm.
In 1757 he made himself master of Fort William Henry, which commanded the
lake of Saint-Sacrement; in 1758 he repulsed with less than four thousand
men the attack of General Abercrombie, at the head of sixteen thousand
men, on Carillon, and forced the latter to relinquish the shores of Lake
Champlain.  This was cutting the enemy off once more from the road to
Montreal; but Louisbourg, protected in 1757 by the fleet of Admiral
Dubois de la Motte, and now abandoned to its own resources, in vain
supported an unequal siege; the fortifications were in ruins, the
garrison was insufficient notwithstanding its courage and the heroism of
the governor, M. de Drucourt.  Seconded by his wife, who flitted about
the ramparts, cheering and tending the wounded, he energetically opposed
the landing of the English, and maintained himself for two months in an
almost open place.  When he was at last obliged to surrender, on the 26th
of July, Louisbourg was nothing but a heap of ruins; all the inhabitants
of the islands of St. John and Cape Breton were transported by the
victors to France.

Canada had by this time cost France dear; and she silently left it to its
miserable fate.  In vain did the governor, the general, the commissariat
demand incessantly re-enforcements, money, provisions; no help came from
France.  "We keep on fighting, nevertheless," wrote Montcalm to the
minister of war, "and we will bury ourselves, if necessary, under the
ruins of the colony."  Famine, the natural result of neglecting the land,
went on increasing: the Canadians, hunters and soldiers as they were, had
only cleared and cultivated their fields in the strict ratio of their
daily wants; there was a lack of hands; every man was under arms;
destitution prevailed everywhere; the inhabitants of Quebec were reduced
to siege-rations; the troops complained and threatened to mutiny; the
enemy had renewed their efforts: in the campaign of 1758, the journals of
the Anglo-American colonies put their land forces at sixty thousand men.
"England has at the present moment more troops in motion on this
continent than Canada contains inhabitants, including old men, women,
and children," said a letter to Paris from M. Doreil, war commissioner.
Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, who had lately, come to the head of
the English government, resolved to strike the last blow at the French
power in America.  Three armies simultaneously invaded Canada; on the
25th of June, 1759, a considerable fleet brought under the walls of
Quebec General Wolfe, a young and hopeful officer who had attracted
notice at the siege of Louisbourg.  "If General Montcalm succeeds again
this year in frustrating our hopes," said Wolfe, "he may be considered an
able man; either the colony has resources that nobody knows of, or our
generals are worse than usual."

Quebec was not fortified; the loss of it involved that of all Canada; it
was determined to protect the place by an outlying camp; appeal was made
to the Indian tribes, lately zealous in the service of France, but now
detached from it by ill fortune and diminution of the advantages offered
them, and already for the most part won over by the English.  The
Canadian colonists, exhausted by war and famine, rose in mass to defend
their capital.  The different encampments which surrounded Quebec
contained about thirteen thousand soldiers.  "So strong a force had not
been reckoned upon," says an eye-witness, "because nobody had expected to
have so large a number of Canadians; but there prevailed so much
emulation among this people that there were seen coming into the camp old
men of eighty and children of from twelve to thirteen, who would not hear
of profiting by the exemption accorded to their age."  The poor
cultivators, turned soldiers, brought to the camp their slender
resources; the enemy was already devastating the surrounding country.
"It will take them half a century to repair the damage," wrote an
American officer in his journal of the expedition on the St. Lawrence.
The bombardment of Quebec was commencing at the same moment.

For more than a month the town had stood the enemy's fire; all the
buildings were reduced to ruins, and the French had not yet budged from
their camp of Ange-Gardien.  On the 31st of July, General Wolfe, with
three thousand men, came and attacked them in front by the River
St. Lawrence, and in flank by the River Montmorency.  He was repulsed by
the firm bravery of the Canadians, whose French impetuosity seemed to
have become modified by contact with the rough climates of the north.
Immovable in their trenches, they waited until the enemy was within
range; and, when at length they fired, the skill of the practised hunters
made fearful havoc in the English ranks.  Everywhere repulsed, General
Wolfe in despair was obliged to retreat.  He all but died of vexation,
overwhelmed with the weight of his responsibility.  "I have only a choice
of difficulties left," he wrote to the English cabinet.  Aid and
encouragement did not fail him.

The forts of Carillon on Lake Champlain and of Niagara on Lake Ontario
were both in the hands of the English.  A portion of the Canadians had
left the camp to try and gather in the meagre crops which had been
cultivated by the women and children.  In the night between the 12th and
13th of September, General Wolfe made a sudden dash upon the banks of the
St. Lawrence; he landed at the creek of Foulon.  The officers had replied
in French to the _Qui vive_ ( Who goes there?) of the sentinels, who had
supposed that what they saw passing was a long-expected convoy of
provisions; at daybreak the English army was ranged in order of battle on
the Plains of Abraham; by evening, the French were routed, the Marquis of
Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.

General Wolfe had not been granted time to enjoy his victory.  Mortally
wounded in a bayonet charge which he himself headed, he had been carried
to the rear.  The surgeons who attended to him kept watching the battle
from a distance.  "They fly," exclaimed one of them.  "Who?" asked
the general, raising himself painfully.  "The French!"  was the answer.
"Then I am content to die."  he murmured, and expired.

[Illustration: Death of Wolfe----209]

Montcalm had fought like a soldier in spite of his wounds; when he fell
he still gave orders about the measures to be taken and the attempts to
be made.  "All is not lost," he kept repeating.  He was buried in a hole
pierced by a cannonball in the middle of the church of the Ursulines; and
there he still rests.  In 1827, when all bad feeling had subsided, Lord
Dalhousie, the then English governor of Canada, ordered the erection at
Quebec of an obelisk in marble bearing the names and busts of Wolfe and
Montcalm, with this inscription: _Mortem virtus communem, famam historia,
monumentum posteritas dedit_ [Valor, history, and posterity assigned
fellowship in death, fame, and memorial].

In 1759, the news of the death of the two generals was accepted as a sign
of the coming of the end.  Quebec capitulated on the 18th of September,
notwithstanding the protests of the population.  The government of Canada
removed to Montreal.

The joy in England was great, as was the consternation in France.  The
government had for a long while been aware of the state to which the army
and the brave Canadian people had been reduced, the nation knew nothing
about it; the repeated victories of the Marquis of Montcalm had caused
illusion as to the gradual decay of resources.  The English Parliament
resolved to send three armies to America, and the remains of General
Wolfe were interred at Westminster with great ceremony.  King Louis XV.
and his ministers sent to Canada a handful of men and a vessel which
suffered capture from the English; the governor's drafts were not paid at
Paris.  The financial condition of France did not permit her to any
longer sustain the heroic devotion of her children.

M. de Lally-Tollendal was still struggling single-handed in India,
exposed to the hatred and the plots of his fellow-countrymen as well as
of the Hindoos, at the very moment when the Canadians, united in the same
ideas of effort and sacrifice, were trying their last chance in the
service of the distant mother-country, which was deserting them.  The
command had passed from the hands of Montcalm into those of the general
who was afterwards a marshal and Duke of Levis.  He resolved, in the
spring of 1760, to make an attempt to recover Quebec.

"All Europe," says Raynal, "supposed that the capture of the capital was
an end to the great quarrel in North America.  Nobody supposed that a
handful of French who lacked everything, who seemed forbidden by fortune
itself to harbor any hope, would dare to dream of retarding inevitable
fate."  On the 28th of April, the army of General de Levis, with great
difficulty maintained during the winter, debouched before Quebec on those
Plains of Abraham but lately so fatal to Montcalm.

General Murray at once sallied from the place in order to engage before
the French should have had time to pull themselves together.  It was a
long and obstinate struggle; the men fought hand to hand, with
impassioned ardor, without the cavalry or the savages taking any part in
the action; at nightfall General Murray had been obliged to re-enter the
town and close the gates.  The French, exhausted but triumphant, returned
slowly from the pursuit; the unhappy fugitives fell into the hands of the
Indians; General de Levis had great difficulty in putting a stop to the
carnage.  In his turn he besieged Quebec.

One single idea possessed the minds of both armies; what flag would be
carried by the vessels which were expected every day in the St.
Lawrence?  "The circumstances were such on our side," says the English
writer Knox, "that if the French fleet had been the first to enter the
river, the place would have fallen again into the hands of its former
masters."

On the 9th of May, an English frigate entered the harbor.  A week
afterwards, it was followed by two other vessels.  The English raised
shouts of joy upon the ramparts, the cannon of the place saluted the
arrivals.  During the night between the 16th and 17th of May, the little
French army raised the siege of Quebec.  On the 6th of September, the
united forces of Generals Murray, Amherst, and Haviland invested
Montreal.

A little wall and a ditch, intended to resist the attacks of Indians, a
few pieces of cannon eaten up with rust, and three thousand five hundred
troops--such were the means of defending Montreal.  The rural population
yielded at last to the good fortune of the English, who burned on their
marsh the recalcitrant villages.  Despair was in every heart; M. de
Vaudreuil assembled during the night a council of war.  It was determined
to capitulate in the name of the whole colony.  The English generals
granted all that was asked by the Canadian population; to its defenders
they refused the honors of war.  M. de Levis retired to the Island of
Sainte-Helene, resolved to hold out to the last extremity; it was only at
the governor's express command that he laid down arms.  No more than
three thousand soldiers returned to France.

The capitulation of Montreal was signed on the 8th of September, 1760;
on the 10th of February, 1763, the peace concluded between France, Spain,
and England completed without hope of recovery the loss of all the French
possessions in America; Louisiana had taken no part in the war; it was
not conquered; France ceded it to Spain in exchange for Florida, which
was abandoned to the English.  Canada and all the islands of the St.
Lawrence shared the same fate.  Only the little islands of St. Pierre and
Miquelon were preserved for the French fisheries.  One single stipulation
guaranteed to the Canadians the free exercise of the Catholic religion.
The principal inhabitants of the colony went into exile on purpose to
remain French.  The weak hands of King Louis XV. and of his government
had let slip the fairest colonies of France,

Canada and Louisiana had ceased to belong to her; yet attachment to
France subsisted there a long while, and her influence left numerous
traces there.  It is an honor and a source of strength to France that she
acts powerfully on men through the charm and suavity of her intercourse;
they who have belonged to France can never forget her.

The struggle was over.  King Louis XV. had lost his American colonies,
the nascent empire of India, and the settlements of Senegal.  He
recovered Guadaloupe and Martinique, but lately conquered by the English,
Chandernuggur and the ruins of Pondicherry.  The humiliation was deep and
the losses were irreparable.  All the fruits of the courage, of the
ability, and of the passionate devotion of the French in India and in
America were falling into the hands of England.  Her government had
committed many faults; but the strong action of a free people had always
managed to repair them.  The day was coming when the haughty passions of
the mother-country and the proud independence of her colonies would
engage in that supreme struggle which has given to the world the United
States of America.




CHAPTER LIV.----LOUIS XV.--THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.--MINISTRY OF THE DUKE OF
CHOISEUL.  1748-1774.

It was not only in the colonies and on the seas that the peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle had seemed merely a truce destined to be soon broken;
hostilities had never ceased in India or Canada; English vessels scoured
the world, capturing, in spite of treaties, French merchant-ships; in
Europe and on the continent, all the sovereigns were silently preparing
for new efforts; only the government of King Louis XV., intrenched behind
its disinterestedness in the negotiations, and ignoring the fatal
influences of weakness and vanity, believed itself henceforth beyond the
reach of a fresh war.  The nation, as oblivious as the government, but
less careless than it, because they had borne the burden of the fault
committed, were applying for the purpose of their material recovery that
power of revival which, through a course of so many errors and reverses,
has always saved France; in spite of the disorder in the finances and the
crushing weight of the imposts, she was working and growing rich;
intellectual development was following the rise in material resources;
the court was corrupt and inert, like the king, but a new life,
dangerously free and bold, was beginning to course through men's minds
the wise, reforming instincts, the grave reflections of the dying
Montesquieu no longer sufficed for them; Voltaire, who had but lately
been still moderate and almost respectful, was about to commence with his
friends of the _L'Encyclopedie_ that campaign against the Christian faith
which was to pave the way for the materialism of our own days.  "Never
was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750
and 1758," he has said in his _Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV._  The evil,
however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the
old French society were cracking up noiselessly.  The Parliaments were
about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and
more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole
instructress and directress.  The natural heads of the nation, the
priests and the great lords, thought no longer and lived no longer as it.
The public voice was raised simultaneously against the authority or
insensate prodigality of Madame de Pompadour, and against the refusal,
ordered by the Archbishop of Paris, of the sacraments.  "The public, the
public!"  wrote M. d'Argenson; "its animosity, its encouragements, its
pasquinades, its insolence--that is what I fear above everything."  The
state of the royal treasury and the measures to which recourse was had to
enable the state to make both ends meet, aggravated the dissension and
disseminated discontent amongst all classes of society.  Comptrollers-
general came one after another, all armed with new expedients; MM. de
Machault, Moreau de Sechelles, de Moras, excited, successively, the wrath
and the hatred of the people crushed by imposts in peace as well as war;
the clergy refused to pay the twentieth, still claiming their right of
giving only a free gift; the states-districts, Languedoc and Brittany at
the head, resisted, in the name of their ancient privileges, the
collection of taxes to which they had not consented; riots went on
multiplying; they even extended to Paris, where the government was
accused of kidnapping children for transportation to the colonies.  The
people rose, several police-agents were massacred; the king avoided
passing through the capital on his way from Versailles to the camp at
Compiegne; the path he took in the Bois de Boulogne received the name of
Revolt Road.  "I have seen in my days," says D'Argenson, "a decrease in
the respect and love of the people for the kingship."

Decadence went on swiftly, and no wonder.  At forty years of age Louis
XV., finding every pleasure pall, indifferent to or forgetful of business
from indolence and disgust, bored by everything and on every occasion,
had come to depend solely on those who could still manage to amuse him.

[Illustration: Madame de Pompadour----215]

Madame de Pompadour had accepted this ungrateful and sometimes shameful
task.  Born in the ranks of the middle class, married young to a rich
financier, M. Lenormant d'Etioles, Mdlle. Poisson, created Marchioness
of Pompadour, was careful to mix up more serious matters with the royal
pleasures.  The precarious lot of a favorite was not sufficient for her
ambition.  Pretty, clever, ingenious in devising for the king new
amusements and objects of interest, she played comedy before him in her
small apartments and travelled with him from castle to castle; she thus
obtained from his easy prodigality enormous sums to build pleasaunces
which she amused herself by embellishing; Bellevue, Babiole, the
marchioness' house at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury.
Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of
imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at
Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king
took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the
proceeds of it at high prices.  Everybody was anxious to please the
favorite; her incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain
branches of the trade in luxuries.  The expenses of the royal household
went on increasing daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis
XIV. were surpassed by the fancies of Madame de Pompadour.  Vigilant in
attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her,
favors, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to
facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the
people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments.  The
greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well deserved the
severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and courts.
"Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to grow
rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy,
neglect of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen, fear of
virtue in the prince, hope in his weaknesses, and more than all that, the
ridicule constantly thrown upon virtue, form, I trow, the characteristics
of the greatest number of courtiers, distinctive in all places and at all
times."  The majesty of Louis XIV. and the long lustre of his reign had
been potent enough to create illusions as to the dangers and the
corruptions of the court; the remnants of military glory were about to
fade out round Louis XV.; the court still swarmed with brave officers,
ready to march to death at the head of the troops; the command of armies
henceforth depended on the favor of Madame the Marchioness of Pompadour.

The day had come when the fortune of war was about to show itself fatal
to France.  Marshal Saxe had died at Chambord, still young and worn out
by excesses rather than by fatigue; this foreigner, this Huguenot, as he
was called by Louis XV., had been the last to maintain and continue the
grand tradition of French generals.  War, however, was inevitable; five
months of public or private negotiation, carried on by the ambassadors or
personal agents of the king, could not obtain from England any reparation
for her frequent violation of the law of nations; the maritime trade of
France was destroyed; the vessels of the royal navy were themselves no
longer safe at sea.  On the 21st of December, 1755, the minister of
foreign affairs, Rouille, notified to the English cabinet, "that His Most
Christian Majesty, before giving way to the effects of his resentment,
once more demanded from the King of England satisfaction for all the
seizures made by the English navy, as well as restitution of all vessels,
whether war-ships or merchant-ships, taken from the French, declaring
that he should regard any refusal that might be made as an authentic
declaration of war."  England eluded the question of law, but refused
restitution.  On the 23d of January, an embargo was laid on all English
vessels in French ports, and war was officially proclaimed.  It had
existed in fact for two years past.

A striking incident signalized the commencement of hostilities.  Rather a
man of pleasure and a courtier than an able soldier, Marshal Richelieu
had, nevertheless, the good fortune to connect his name with the only
successful event of the Seven Years' War that was destined to remain
impressed upon the mind of posterity.  Under his orders, a body of twelve
thousand men, on board of a squadron, commanded by M. de la
Galissonniere, left Toulon on the 10th of April, 1756, at the moment when
England was excited by expectation of a coming descent upon her coasts.
On the 17th, the French attacked the Island of Minorca, an important
point whence the English threatened Toulon, and commanded the western
basin of the Mediterranean.  Some few days later, the English troops,
driven out of Ciudadela and Mahon, had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip,
and the French cannon were battering the ramparts of the vast citadel.

On the 10th of May an English fleet, commanded by Admiral Byng, appeared
in the waters of Port Mahon; it at once attacked M. de la Galissonniere.
The latter succeeded in preventing the English from approaching land.
After an obstinate struggle, Admiral Byng, afraid of losing his fleet,
fell back on Gibraltar.  The garrison of Fort St.  Philip waited in vain
for the return of the squadron; left to its own devices, it nevertheless
held out; the fortifications seemed to be impregnable; the siege-works
proceeded slowly; the soldiers were disgusted, and began to indulge to
excess in the wine of Spain.  "No one who gets drunk shall have the honor
of mounting the breach," said Richelieu's general order.  Before long he
resolved to attempt the assault.

[Illustration: Attack on Fort St. Philip----218]

Fort St. Philip towered up proudly on an enormous mass of rock; the
French regiments flung themselves into the fosses, setting against the
ramparts ladders that were too short; the soldiers mounted upon one
another's shoulders, digging their bayonets into the interstices between
the stones; the boldest were already at the top of the bastions.  On the
28th of June, at daybreak, three of the forts were in possession of the
French; the same day the English commandant decided upon capitulation.
The Duke of Fronsac, Marshal Richelieu's son, hurried to Versailles to
announce the good news.  There was great joy at court and amongst the
French nation; the French army and navy considered themselves avenged of
England's insults.  In London Admiral Byng was brought to trial; he was