King William's War Page 18
“Yesterday’s action mightily encouraged all our men,” one member of Phips’s expedition wrote of the skirmish for Savage’s bark. This spirit was evident, as at daybreak on October 18 Phips once again gave the order for the army to take to its boats.25 By early afternoon most of the troops had made their way onto the whaleboats and small landing craft throughout the fleet. In all they numbered 1,300 men, most hailing from Boston and the towns about this city. “Considering how far many of our vessels were from the shoar, and the help we had, never more men were landed in less time,” Walley wrote of the operations. The general met a few scattered shots but no real resistance in forming his troops upon the north shore. Four companies were selected as the advance guard and in a skirmish line probed a hundred yards ahead of the army. It did not take long to find the enemy. Once the English advance guard entered the brush and tall marsh grasses, patches of gunfire began to ring out. Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil, the eldest of the famous Le Moyne brothers, and about three hundred men from his detachment and the nearby town of Beauport soon opened a smart fire on the English right flank from behind a small creek. The shock of the attack scattered the advance guard on this side. The New Englanders soon counterattacked, at which point Longueuil’s men vanished into the thickets, only to reform a few hundred yards to their rear, break into small groups, and probe forward once again in search of their enemy. There was much lighter firing on the English left and center as well, and it quickly gave way before the advancing numbers. Walley left a detachment to deal with the French skirmishers on the right and advanced with the rest of the landing force toward the St. Charles River. There was a brief skirmish at a barn along the way and the structure was put to the torch, which made clear to the observers in Quebec the progress of his army. By nightfall the English commander and a third of the landing force were encamped along the north shore of the St. Charles River while the rest of the army encamped around a farmhouse about a quarter of a mile away. The landing and quick advance had cost the English four killed and over sixty wounded, but they had achieved their first objective on time.26
That evening a French deserter entered the English camp. Under threat of death the Frenchman, a colonial marine from Montreal, informed Walley and his officers that six hundred men had disputed their landing and that there were not less than three thousand men in the town, almost all the troops from Montreal having arrived with Callières the day before. He also told them that some nine hundred French occupied the south bank of the St. Charles and that the Palace Gate battery at the western edge of the town had been increased to eight guns. It was not good news. With such opposition in place crossing the river would present a major challenge. Embarking operations and the small support vessels assisting in the operation would be subjected to a hail of gunfire and heavy cannon. For the moment Walley and his staff kept the deserter’s report quiet so “that others might not be discouraged.”27
Frontenac’s guess as to the English landing was correct. As he watched the small boats form up around noon, he dispatched a sizable detachment of militia from Three Rivers and Montreal under St. Helene with orders to cross the St. Charles and aid the elder Le Moyne. These troops and Le Moyne’s men skirmished with Walley’s army for several hours, until Le Moyne broke off the action on the English right and Frontenac ordered the Three Rivers and Montreal militia back to the south bank of the St. Charles. After sunset the French sentries watched Phips’s four biggest vessels, the Six Friends, the Swan, the John and Thomas, and the American Merchant, unfurl their sails and take up a position before the lower town. The French gunners wasted no time and engaged the enemy as soon as they took station. Phips gave the order to return fire and the English ships began engaging the upper town’s batteries and Fort St. Louis. Around eight o’clock both sides disengaged with little to show for the effort.28
Walley and his men waited for their support and landing vessels at high tide, but contrary winds had prevented their arrival. It was agreed in a council of war that the army would stand prepared to attempt the crossing at the next high tide. A few hours later the landing force watched the artillery duel between the English warships and the town. It was a spectacular sight. The flashes of cannon and the delayed boom created an effect as if a thunderstorm were on the horizon. The battle was only two hours long, and it was impossible to tell what exactly had transpired, but it left Walley and his men wondering why the admiral had engaged the town before the army was over the St. Charles.
The English army spent a wet, frost-filled evening on the banks of the St. Charles. Before daybreak, and without Walley’s knowledge, six cannon were landed not far from the army. It made no sense to the English commander. Transporting these guns across the river and then hauling them up the heights on the opposite shore would accomplish nothing but slow the advance down. Why they were landed at all escaped him.29
At sunrise Phips returned to his bombardment. The French batteries opened fire as soon as the vessels were in range. At first the English were slow to respond, but it was not long before the engagement heated up. Captain Eldredge of the American Merchant took the lead and began a vigorous exchange with the Sault au Matelot batteries and the north-most battery in the lower town. The Six Friends followed, and together the two vessels closed to within a few hundred yards of the lower town. Phips and Eldredge soon realized their mistake as a volley of geysers straddled their vessels, indicating that the French had quickly found the range. The next volleys repeatedly struck both vessels, cutting away rigging and tearing through the hull, which sent reverberations down the length of the ships. Suddenly a cheer broke out from the city’s ramparts when a cannonball cut the flagstaff on the Six Friends, sending the admiral’s pennant fluttering into the St. Lawrence. Undaunted the pair of English vessels dueled with the French batteries, but what little success they might have achieved was more than outweighed by the damage they were taking. The Six Friends’ main mast had been struck, and its rigging had become a tangled mess draped across parts of the ship. More than twenty cannonballs had pierced the hull, and there were half a dozen hits between wind and water to contend with. The smaller American Merchant was in serious condition as well, but it was not until Eldredge had nearly expended all of his ammunition that he broke off and withdrew downstream. Seeing the American Merchant departing, and fearing for his vessel, Phips ordered the anchor cable cut, and the Six Friends drifted out of range to the fading cheers of the defenders. The other two English warships, positioned farther east in the main channel, continued their long-range cannonade for the next few hours before they finally moved off around five o’clock.30
The English warships rejoined the fleet and licked their wounds. The Six Friends and the American Merchant required immediate attention, while the Swan and the twenty-six-gun John and Thomas had suffered only minor damage. Remarkably, casualties had been light, with a few killed and a few dozen wounded in the engagement, almost all of whom were on board Eldredge’s or Phips’s vessels. Courage was not lacking in the attack, but experience and common sense were. The damage could be repaired, but in their fury to neutralize Quebec’s guns, Phips’s warships had expended almost all of their powder, making a second effort out of the question. Nor had they succeeded in accomplishing much. One enemy gun had been dismounted and there was scattered structural damage to many of the buildings in the upper town, but ultimately they had failed to degrade the town’s defenses or dissuade its defenders.
Walley and his officers watched Phips continue his attack on Quebec. There was little else they could do. Bad weather had once again delayed the supply and transport vessels from entering the St. Charles at high tide. After having skirmished with French detachments most of the previous day his men were short on ammunition. They were also short on provisions, as it had been agreed that the army would be resupplied by the vessels that would transport them over the river. Sporadic shots rang out throughout the day as English scouts sent out to guard the army’s perimeter sparred with small Canadian detachments.
Evening high tide came and went without the promised supply vessels, although half a barrel of powder and a small number of biscuits were landed, as were fifty men to handle the cannon that the general had not asked for.31
By now Walley had seen enough. The army’s meager provisions were nearly exhausted, and his troops were ill-equipped to spend another freezing mid-October night along the banks of the St. Charles. He convened a council of war that evening to discuss the options. Almost all agreed that the weary and disheartened state of the troops, coupled with the news that Frontenac had marched three battalions of marines and erected an eight-gun battery on the north shore of the St. Charles, called any advance into question. Even if the army managed to force its way across the river, it still had to scale a steep and narrow passage to gain the heights before the town’s walls. It would be impossible to transport the artillery over this route, without which a siege of the town would be meaningless, and if anything went wrong the army might well be trapped on the wrong side of the river. Taken together it was enough that the council requested that the general immediately meet with Phips and request that the troops be withdrawn and another landing site considered.
Walley met with Phips around noon on October 20. The admiral had still held out hope that the army might advance, but given the circumstances he agreed to re-embark the troops and promised to dispatch the needed boats that day. The meeting had no sooner ended than the sound of gunfire from shore caught the two men’s attention. Early that day Frontenac had dispatched a detachment of Canadians and Indians to assist Longueil and St. Helene’s forces, who still hovered around the English lines. Around midafternoon the Le Moyne brothers attacked a party of English scouts posted on the army’s flank. The engagement, which began with a handful of shots, quickly drew reinforcements from both sides and soon turned into a smart skirmish. Taking advantage of the cover provided by the woods and tall grasses the Canadians and their native allies slowly pushed in the enemy pickets and roused the entire English army.32
The intense fire soon drew Frontenac’s attention. Worried that Longueil and St. Helene’s detachment might be forced to retreat across the St. Charles the governor ordered his troops along the south shore to form ranks and array themselves in order of battle. The sound of drums and trumpet calls from the direction of the river alarmed Major Thomas Savage, who was in command with Walley’s absence. Believing that a major French counterattack was underway Savage ordered the army to fall back from their current position into more open terrain where, supported by their cannon, they would be in a better position to meet the enemy.
Along the south bank of the St. Charles Frontenac waited impatiently for news. An English warship had fired a few cannon at his formations, but this quickly stopped when the recently reinforced Palace Gate battery responded. Soon columns of smoke could be seen from the area around the English encampment. After a few hours it became clear that the numbers were too great for Longueil and St. Helene, and a retreat was ordered. Fortunately for the French, the English army was busy moving in the other direction. The French detachment, and their two wounded commanders, crossed the St. Charles under Frontenac’s watchful eye without incident.33
Walley returned not long after the engagement had died down and informed his officers that the army was to withdraw. It was then suggested by several officers that the encampment should move to the shore to facilitate embarking the troops. The general agreed, and that night the English army quietly shifted its position. At dawn the landing craft appeared, which set off a chaotic rush for the beach among the beleaguered troops. Fearing a panic-driven disaster, Walley waved off the vessels and formed the army up into order of battle. The general then sent out three company-sized detachments to “beat up the swamps that were round us, and beat off these spies that we had reason to judge lay near us.” These units skirmished with French detachments throughout the day, and at one point the Palace Gate battery even fired a few rounds at the English camp.
That night the landing vessels returned. Walley had informed the newly arrived master gunner Alexander Smart and his detachment that he wanted to embark three of the cannon before sending off the troops. The remaining cannon would stay with the rear guard to cover the operation. As waves of rain began to sweep the area the general ordered half the troops to the boats while the other half stood guard. What he got instead was most of the army milling about the landing zone.
I ordered some souldiers to keep the rest from crowding down until those were gone off that were upon the flats; I called to them to be silent, but either of these were little regarded, for the crowd and the noise both increased; the seamen calling out for such souldiers as belonged to their vessels, and the souldiers for such boats as came from the vessels they belonged to, hundreds in the water up to the knees and higher, pressing into boats.34
Walley and some of his officers went from boat to boat attempting to restore order but with limited success. Fortunately, the weather deteriorated, masking the confused withdrawal from the French. After three hours all of the army had safely departed. Five of the cannon, however, were left ashore through a communications mix-up.35
Frontenac was surprised the next morning to find that the English had withdrawn. So great was their panic, the count concluded, that they had left five field pieces, along with their carriages, shot, and a hundred pounds of powder. The message was clear to the governor; the English were going to lift the siege. Fearing that the enemy might make an attempt on a smaller target before returning home, Frontenac sent a detachment to reinforce the settlements on the Ile of Orleans and ordered several others to reinforce Cape Torment farther downriver.36
The French governor was indeed correct: Phips and his men had seen enough. Although there had only been a few dozen casualties from enemy action, a smallpox epidemic had broken out within the fleet, striking far harder than French arms. Provisions were running low, there was very little powder, and the weather was growing worse by the day. Although there was talk of making another attempt, it was never seriously considered. A council of war a few days later made it official; the fleet would depart.
The expedition’s return voyage proved far deadlier than the siege. Illness gnawed away at the army and the late fall weather brought a string of storms that scattered the fleet. Most of Phips’s vessels arrived in Boston on November 19, but half a dozen others went missing. Captain Rainsford and the sixty-man crew of the brigantine Mary were driven ashore on Anticosti Island at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Rainsford and his men managed to get off the sinking ship with enough supplies to sustain them for several months before they were rescued. Several vessels were blown as far south as the Caribbean, while two were never heard from again.37
Coupled with the casualties before Quebec and those from smallpox, these additional losses cost Phips a fifth of his force. It seemed the adventurer turned admiral had not shown the same flair toward his new occupation as he had his old one. In fact, Phips committed several mistakes, but the most important one came before the expedition had even sailed. He simply waited far too long before departing for Quebec. It certainly should not have taken him anywhere near as long to reach the French capital as it did, but in this Phips met with two problems. The first was the lack of a pilot, which is somewhat puzzling given the length of time that transpired between the official start of the expedition and when it set sail. It was perhaps just a piece of bad luck that no pilot could be located, but if so, the second of Phips’s problems, the prevailing winds from the southwest in the St. Lawrence valley, was truly a piece of misfortune.38
The delay in reaching Quebec placed the admiral before the town in mid-October, a precarious time of the year to be conducting a siege. An experienced military leader would have foreseen the risks posed by the season and would have called off the expedition, preserving his forces for another attempt. But Phips was an adventurer and not an experienced military leader. A siege was out of the question. The consumption of supplies from the long voyage, the shortage of
powder, and the lateness of the year all but ruled out that option. Short of an immediate surrender like at Port Royal, the army would only be left with the option of storming the town. Such an operation, however, required precise timing and, more importantly, experienced coordination between the army and the navy. All of these were lacking.
Walley was criticized by some for his conduct, but it is difficult to see what other options he had once the supply vessels failed to arrive at the St. Charles over the course of a few days. By then the French were well prepared and it is perhaps fortunate that the English army did not attempt a crossing. With Frontenac occupying the opposite bank with a similarly sized force, backed by a battery of cannon, it is likely that the English would have paid an unacceptable price if the attempt had been made. When coupled with Phips’s futile attack on the town’s defenses, which not only went against the agreed-upon plan but also needlessly expended the fleet’s scanty supply of powder, it all but ruled out any chance of success.
On the other side, once Frontenac received reports of the English fleet it is hard to criticize his conduct. He rallied the forces of New France to Quebec and stood behind the fortifications he had started earlier. He wisely dismissed the notion of engaging the English army in a pitched battle and instead harassed them with skirmishers while planning a trap along the banks of the St. Charles River. From here, poor English decision making and the weather did the rest. However, even with all the failings of the amateur New England army, Phips, the gambler, had almost arrived before Quebec when it was most vulnerable. Frontenac’s insistence on stripping the capital of its men to reinforce Montreal had nearly been the colony’s undoing. But the governor was lucky on two accounts. First, he was able to throw troops into Quebec a few days before Phips arrived, and second, the English advance down Lake Champlain had not gone as planned.