War is, at best, a cruel business.In Europe its predatory barbarity was passing away and there the lives of prisoners and of women and children were now being respected.Montcalm had been reared under this more civilized code, and he and his officers were shocked by what Vaudreuil regarded as normal and proper warfare.In 1756 the French had a horde of about two thousand savages, who had flocked to Montreal from points as far distant as the great plains of the West.They numbered more than thirty separate tribes or nations, as in their pride they called themselves, and each nation had to be humored and treated as an equal, for they were not in the service of France but were her allies.They expected to be consulted before plans of campaign were completed.The defeat of Braddock in 1755 had made them turn to the prosperous cause of France.Vaudreuil gave them what they hardly required--encouragement to wage war in their own way.The more brutal and ruthless the war on the English, he said, the more quickly would their enemies desire the kind of peace that France must have.The result was that the western frontiers of the English colonies became a hell of ruthless massacre.The savages attacked English settlements whenever they found them undefended.A pioneer might go forth in the morning to his labor and return in the evening to find his house in ashes and his wife and children lying dead with the scalps torn from their heads as trophies of savage prowess.
For years, until the English gained the upper hand over the French, this awful massacre went on.Hundreds of women and children perished.Vaudreuil reported with pride to the French court the number of scalps taken, and in his annals such incidents were written down as victories, He warned Montcalm that he must not be too strict with the savages or some day they would take themselves off and possibly go over to the English and leave the French without indispensable allies.He complained of the lofty tone of the French regular officers towards both Indians and Canadians, and assured the French court that it was only his own tact which prevented an open breach.
Canada lay exposed to attack by three routes by Lake Ontario, by Lake Champlain, and by the St.Lawrence and the sea.It was vital to control the route to the West by Lake Ontario, vital to keep the English from invading Canada by way of Lake Champlain, vital to guard the St.Lawrence and keep open communications with France.Montcalm first directed his attention to Lake Ontario.
Oswego, lying on the south shore, was a fort much prized by the English as a base from which they could attack the French Fort Frontenac on the north side of the lake and cut off Canada from the West.If the English could do this, they would redeem the failure of Braddock and possibly turn the Indians from a French to an English alliance.
The French, in turn, were resolved to capture and destroy Oswego.
In the summer of 1756, they were busy drawing up papers and instructions for the attack.Montcalm wrote to his wife that he had never before worked so hard.He kept every one busy, his aide-de-camp, his staff, and his secretaries.No detail was too minute for his observation.He regulated the changes of clothes which the officers might carry with them.He inspected hospitals, stores, and food, and he even ordered an alteration in the method of making bread.He reorganized the Canadian battalions and in every quarter stirred up new activity.He was strict about granting leave of absence.Sometimes his working day endured for twenty hours--to bed at midnight and up again at four o'clock in the morning.He went with Levis to Lake Champlain to see with his own eyes what was going on there.Then he turned back to Montreal.The discipline among the Canadian troops was poor and he stiffened it, thereby naturally causing great offense to those who liked slack ways and hated to take trouble about sanitation and equipment.He held interminable conferences with his Indian allies.They were astonished to find that the great soldier of whom they had heard so much was so small in stature, but they noted the fire in his eye.He despised their methods of warfare and notes with a touch of irony that, while every other barbarity continues, the burning of prisoners at the stake has rather gone out of fashion, though the savages recently burned an English woman and her son merely to keep in practice.
Montcalm made his plans secretly and struck suddenly.In the middle of August, 1756, he surprised and captured Oswego and took more than sixteen hundred prisoners.Of these, in spite of all that he could do, his Indians murdered some.The blow was deadly.
The English lost vast stores; and now the French controlled the whole region of the Great Lakes.The Indians were on the side of the rising power more heartily than ever, and the unhappy frontier of the English colonies was so harried that murderous savages ventured almost to the outskirts of Philadelphia.
Montcalm caused a Te Deum to be sung on the scene of his victory at Oswego.In August he was back in Montreal where again was sung another joyous Te Deum.He wrote letters in high praise of some of his officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause, the last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting."Don't forget," he wrote to Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard.
The others are not worth speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud was the brother of Vaudreuil.When the Governor wrote to the minister, he, for his part, said that the success of the expedition was wholly due to his own vigilance and firmness, aided chiefly by this brother, "mon frere," and Le Mercier, both of whom Montcalm describes as inept.Vaudreuil adds that only his own tact kept the Indian allies from going home because Montcalm would not let them have the plunder which they desired.
