Lieutenant Kemmis readily agreed to my proposal for forthwith playing the game on the ice, with ten men a side, and himself for umpire. We improvised the crosses and the ball, and were soon sufficiently adept at the game to look forward with pleasure to imparting it to our men at the Isle of Jesus and playing matches in rivalry between the several companies. However, Lieutenant Kemmis, fearful of accidents, barred fisticuffs and kicking, and bade us play in our waistcoats rather than stark naked.
After our first game, which left us with limbs very stiff, but in the highest spirits, I wished that I were in General Riedesel’s confidence and could recommend the sport to him as a medicine for his dispirited heroes.
We were aware that, with the end of winter, our period of inactivity would come to an end, and our campaign be resumed. To me, Canada had proved a very kind foster-mother. Indeed, it occurred to me that, were I ever obliged to remove from my native country and inhabit another, this would be my choice, though situate within winter’s peculiar meridians. The climate of Montreal was especially salubrious and did I but take pains to master the French tongue – for the Canadian French are very loath to learn the English – I might with industry and a small principal settle myself here very comfortably indeed. This feeling of gratefulness, still warm in my breast, will excuse that I have dwelt at such length upon the beauties and natural curiosities of the province.
I had the good fortune to visit Montreal on Holy Thursday, which they called La Fête Dieu, and which generally coincided with the departure of winter. On that day, at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, a great procession of the clergy in general, and the friars of all the monasteries, attended with a band of music, moved out from the great church and passed down the streets, occupying nearly half a mile of ground. They bore lighted candles in their hands.
The townspeople had prepared for this ceremonial by procuring large pines and firs from the woods, with which they lined the streets on both sides, making the boughs connect at the top, so that the religious spectacle proceeded under an umbrageous shelter, as if through a grove of living trees. The centre of the procession was occupied by the Host laid upon an open copy of the Scriptures in Latin, with a white cloth spread over, and above it a crimson canopy borne by six venerable priests. Boys in white vestments scattered flowers while others swung silver thuribles which they constantly wafted towards the Host, so that the smell of incense made the streets fragrant; and all the people sang joyful anthems. Protestant or no Protestant, I was pleased to pull off my cap, as had been ordered by General Phillips, the City Commandant, out of respect for the innocent emotions of these gay, good people – who fell with one accord upon their knees as the Host passed – and for the superb solemnities of the Romish Church.
On Holy Thursday the yellow wax candles that had been used in the ceremonial were cut into small pieces and distributed to the faithful, for a small pecuniary consideration, to be used as charms against tempests. If such a stump were lighted when the wind rose, its fury would – they thought – soon abate. A woman who kept a grog-shop near the barracks, with whom I was a favourite, presented me with one of these relics; informing me of its powers, and solemnly warning me against using it except for the purpose I have mentioned. I put it in my knapsack, after thanking her gravely, and thought no more about it.
Before the end of March the thaw had begun, Montreal having three weeks’ advantage of Quebec in the matter of the spring’s arrival, and it was no longer safe to play la crosse or perform our military exercises upon the frozen river. The river had been the parade-ground for some time past, for the snow lay deep upon the ground, but upon the ice it thawed daily in the sun and froze to small ice overnight – moreover, a steady footing was provided for the troops by the sweepings of the stables and byres which were thrown out upon the ice to be carried off when it should break up. One day, as we were at our platoon exercise, a sharp crack sounded under our feet like a discharge of grape and the ice split across from bank to bank. We broke ranks in alarm and one man was injured by a bayonet in the general sauve qui peut, but the crack was of no immediate significance. However, the warm weather continued and soon the ice along the bank gaped with great chasms. Frequent roars of breaking ice were heard from the centre of the river, where the fantastic ice-mountains had formed. As the waters became swollen by the melting of the snow, these mountains fell into the stream and were hurried down towards Quebec with tremendous impetuosity: until becoming wedged in narrow places between islands and heaping up there again in the form of new mountains. The greatest roar of all was heard at midnight of the last day of April when some obstruction, half a mile downstream from us, gave way. When we awoke in the morning, there was the river flowing clear and blue under the cloudless sky, and we were true islanders again; instead of carriages and sleighs driving across from the barracks to the mainland, canoes and batteaux came dancing down.
However, so long as there remained fragments of ice in the river, no navigation was possible to ships of burden, for these bergs, when frozen to the bottom, were no less dangerous than a rock – or than a charging spermaceti whale, when afloat.
We were distressed to learn that among the many victims of the thaw was Major Bolton, who was drowned in the Lakes on his way to Montreal, by the batteau he was in striking a submerged lump of ice with great force and sinking forthwith. Richard Harlowe brought us the melancholy intelligence; and in consequence of his employer’s death he was obliged to quit The Eighth and be restored to the strength of The Ninth. When he was asked what had become of his wife, he replied that he feared her drowned in the Falls of Niagara, pursuant upon a threat that she had made him in a fit of rage. He affected to be disconsolate, and, whether or not he had banished from his mind all memory of his half-breed mistress, he at least refrained from boasting to us of that conquest. Towards me, he continued sullen and reserved.
During a fortnight the roads had been impassable, but now were quite dry and even dusty. Spring came with a rush, and we had hardly congratulated ourselves upon its delightful appearance when it passed on and gave place to summer. In a very few days the bare trees were in full leaf and the barren, frozen ground was green with grass and decorated with innumerable flowers.
Our annual supply of clothing, the new suit for every man for which stoppages were made from our pay, had not yet arrived, and we were told that we must commence the campaign in our old clothes, most of which were in a very ragged condition. But, to make them more presentable, all with long coats were told to reduce them to jackets, and their hats into caps; the cloth remaining over to be used as patches for rents and burns. The caps were now to be furnished with cockades of hair, but no hair being provided we were expected to go foraging for it – as the Israelites of old were expected by their task-masters to furnish themselves with straw for their bricks.
Terry Reeves, who had lately returned to us, his wound healed, and very sorrowful to be parted from his Indian squaw, led a foray of about twenty men of our company into a paddock where a herd of cows was grazing; intending to cut the hair from the ends of their tails. The plan miscarried. The farmer and a number of relatives who happened to be present in the farm-house, because of a funeral feast in progress there, rushed out with sticks and began laying about them with great fury. Two soldiers had their heads broken and their bodies severely bruised before they could be rescued; they were foolish enough the next day to complain to Major Forbes, their officer, of this ‘premeditated assault’. Major Forbes told them downrightly that they had got no more than their deserts. In the first place, it was an inhumane act to cut from the tails of cows those hirsute appendages provided by Nature for switching away the flies that so greatly plagued them in the hot season; in the second, they had evidently gone without their side-arms, which should always be worn, being the same to a soldier as a sword is to an officer; in the third, horsehair was far superior to cow’s hair for the making of cockades. Terry therefore led a new expedition, under cover of darkness, to the artillery barrack
at Montreal, where sufficient hair was secured for the whole company from the tails of the gun horses and officers’ chargers found unguarded there in the stables.
Chapter XIX
OUR LIGHT infantry and grenadier companies were transported across the St Lawrence River and marched to Boucherville, where we found the flank companies of the other regiments assembled, and took part with them in combined manœuvres under the approving eye of General Burgoyne.
General Burgoyne had spent the winter in England, together with several other officers of the army in Canada who were, like him, members of Parliament, and had there endeavoured to persuade the Ministry that he was far fitter to command the expedition against Ticonderoga than General Carleton. He alleged that General Carleton had been slow to press his advantage in the previous campaign, when he might have taken Ticonderoga almost without loss, and thus struck a resounding blow against the rebels; and that General Carleton was by no means beloved of the troops.
Now, the Secretary for War was Lord George Germaine. The greater part of the Army was unaware who this person might be, and gave no attention to the matter. But one day in this same summer I was greatly astonished to learn some particulars of his previous history. It happened in this manner. I had come upon old Sergeant Fitzpatrick and two sergeants of the Twentieth Regiment who, the day being July 31st, were drinking together in our bivouac. All wore roses in their caps to commemorate the glorious victory of Minden of which this was the anniversary, for before the battle the troops had lain in a rose garden and thus gaily decked themselves in contempt of the French. Now up rode stout old General Phillips. He stopped to shake the hands of his comrades-in-arms, but, says he, very sharply to Sergeant Fitzpatrick: ‘How come you by this rose? I never heard that The Ninth fought at Minden.’
‘No, General Phillips,’ rejoined the sergeant, ‘but The Twenty-third did so fight, with whom I then had the honour of serving, and in the leading line too. I remember your Honour on that occasion, how you split no less than fifteen canes on the rumps and sides of your sweating horses in bringing the guns up. And if I may make bold enough to say it, sir, I am right glad that today we have no Lord George Sackville in command of our cavalry.’
This Lord George Sackville had been in command of the British cavalry on that famous occasion and behaved very ill. An order had been given to the infantry to advance when they heard the beat of a signal drum. An aide-de-camp in a hurry conveyed the message that six British battalions and two of Germans were to advance at the beat of the drum; but this became mistakenly changed into an order to advance ‘at beat of drum’. This they did forthwith, very courageously, despite a cruel cross-fire of artillery, before the French were marshalled in position; and by their unassisted efforts drove off the held a great mass of enemy infantry and – an unheard-of feat – a force of French cavalry of double their number. Lord George Sackville was hastily desired by Prince Ferdinand, the allied Commander, to pursue the routed French with his cavalry, but he stood fast, either from cowardice or because of personal pique against the Prince, pretending that he did not understand how the movement was to be carried out. Our noble Colonel, then plain Captain Ligonier, came galloping up to ask Lord George why he delayed. A Colonel Sloper, of the cavalry, cried out to Captain Ligonier, pointing in exasperation at his Lordship: ‘For God’s sake, repeat your orders to that man, that he may not pretend to misunderstand them, for it is near half an hour ago that he received orders to advance and yet we are still here. You see the condition he is in!’ But the moment had passed, and Prince Ferdinand was robbed of the fruits of what was, even so, the most resounding victory of the whole century. Lord George Sackville, being in due course court-martialled, was found guilty and very rightly adjudged unfit ever again to command British soldiers in the field.
General Phillips now looked at Sergeant Fitzpatrick in a very peculiar manner. ‘No,’ said he shortly, ‘Lord George Sackville does not command the cavalry of this Northern army, but Lord George Germaine sits in his chair at Downing Street; and there directs and co-ordinates the military operations of the Northern, the Southern, and the Eastern armies.’
One of the sergeants of The Twentieth then remarked: ‘Aye, your Honour, I am sorry to hear that – for though I know little about this lord I have read that he is a sad Whig, having even been approached by that rascal Charles Fox to lead the Opposition. They say that he refused only because – as he frankly owned – to lead an Opposition was an ill paid and thankless task, and he had debts of honour which must be paid at all events. I cannot think that he will manage his task well. But better a thousand times to have such a Whig in the Secretary’s chair than a traitor of the quality of Lord George Sackville.’
General Phillips very gravely: ‘They are one and the same person. “That man”, when he inherited the Germaine estates, changed his name accordingly.’
Well, this Lord George Sackville, or Germaine, nursed a long-standing hatred against a number of generals and other officers: all such as had avoided his company since the notorious court martial fixed so sable a blot upon his name. Among these was General Carleton who had, besides, refused to job for him politically; and his Lordship therefore lent a ready ear to General Burgoyne’s insinuations, and even recommended to the King that General Carleton should be recalled from the Government of Canada. King George scented rancour and prejudice. He consented that General Burgoyne, as an energetic officer, should be put in command of our expedition; yet he retained General Carleton in his government. General Carleton was much mortified and sent in his resignation: for General Burgoyne, as an independent commander, would now be taking orders directly from Lord George Germaine, General Carleton’s professed enemy, and at the same time making requisitions upon the resources of Canada which must be supplied willy-nilly and with all dispatch. When this resignation was refused, however, General Carleton very loyally and generously did everything in his power to assist the arms of his supplanter.
It will be recalled that the British plan of attack was a simultaneous converging upon Albany, on Hudson’s River, of three armies: General Howe’s northward from New York, General Prescott’s westward from Rhode Island, ours southward from Canada. To co-ordinate the movements of three separate armies requires a watchful and controlling central power, great nicety in calculating times and distances, and perfect secrecy. The task would be formidable enough in a country so enormous as America, and with so difficult communications by land and river, even when the three armies were directed along interior lines of defence, namely lines drawn from the centre of the country outward to the frontiers; but was quite desperate when these armies must simultaneously attack inwards from positions on the frontier separated from one another by hundreds of miles of wilderness, and with no possibility of communication between them. For if then the central armies were well handled in opposition, they would mass in superior force against each of the three converging columns in turn, and destroy them piecemeal. It was plain madness to allow such a plan to be directed by any person at all, however gifted, from a distance of three thousand miles away – let alone one who had never set foot in America, or had any notion of conditions there, who relied for his information on prejudiced and inaccurate sources, who could not keep regular office hours or a secret, and who bore an inveterate grudge against the whole British Army. Yet such was the indulgence given by King George, long before he had shown any other signs of the lunacy that afterwards deprived him of his sovereignty, to Lord George Germaine!
I may here append that King George was as unfortunate in his choice of a minister to control his ships upon the sea, as in his choice of a minister to control his armies upon land: for the First Lord of the Admiralty was the ill-living, revengeful, and incompetent Earl of Sandwich, known to all as ‘Jemmy Twitcher’, after the libertine of that name in Mr Gay’s comedy of The Beggar’s Opera. It was he who, twenty years before, had been High Priest of that blasphemous and orgiastic fraternity, the Hellfire Club, alias the Society of the Monks of Medmen
ham Abbey; nor had he changed his nature since that day. He was as cordially hated by his admirals as Lord George Germaine by his generals, for he added hypocrisy to ill-living, and wilful mismanagement of the Navy to hypocrisy. When the Court and Cabinet were set upon revenge against the notorious John Wilkes, the libertarian, whose unseating and reseating as a member of Parliament was the chief political topic of the years before the war, his Lordship was called upon to discredit him in the House of Lords. He did so by reading aloud to the scandalized house a ribald poem composed by this Wilkes, and asked the Lords to brand it as an impious and obscene document; as if their Lordships were unaware that the same John Wilkes, who had also been a Medmenham monk, had printed this composition some years before, for private circulation in the club. Shortly after this, at a performance of The Beggar’s Opera, that odious character, Mr Peachum, whose practice was virtuously to peach on his scoundrelly associates when they were of no further assistance to him, set the whole house in a roar by remarking how surprised he was that Jemmy Twitcher should peach. As for this Jemmy Twitcher’s mismanagement of his office: he starved the dockyards, sold contracts through his mistress, Miss Ray, who presided at the Admiralty as if a coroneted countess and was an unconscionable bargainer, allowed our strength in line-of-battle ships to fall far below the modicum needed for the safety of our coasts, yet lyingly informed the Lords to the contrary, pretending that three times as many frigates were in commission as was actually the case. He also oppressed and cheated those deserving old sea-dogs, the Greenwich Pensioners, who were under his sole charge; and conspired to ruin by calumny and subterfuge a number of eminent and courageous captains and admirals of the Navy – among them ‘Black Dick’, General Howe’s brother, and ‘Little Keppel’. But in spite of all these wicked actions the noble Earl remained in power, as did Lord George Germaine, until the war was irretrievably lost: namely, five years after the period of which I am now writing.