give your general, but from the mouths of my cannon and musketry, that he may know that a man of my rank is not to be summoned after this fashion." The messenger was no sooner on the deck of his vessel than the prompt veteran opened his fire, and the first shot happened to carry away the English general's ensign. During the rest of this day the invaders were inactive. On the evening of the next day, the officer left in command at Montreal came into Quebec with the welcome reinforcement of eight hundred men. The English had prepared to go on shore, but a high wind obstructed the movement, and one of their vessels, carrying sixty men, ran aground, and was with difficulty floated off. The day Oct. 7. Oct. 8. Oct. 9. following, Phips landed a large number of men (supposed by the Governor to be no fewer than two thousand, but said by the English to be "twelve or thirteen hundred ") on the left bank of the river, two miles below the town, and did some little skirmishing; and the fleet cannonaded the fort, but to little purpose on account of its great height above the water. A second cannonading was so well returned from the work as greatly to encourage the assailed party, two of the four largest ships appearing to have suffered severely, while the other two changed their moorings to a place a league above the town. Then an attempt was made at an assault by the troops on shore, but it was intercepted and discomfited by a party which had been placed in an ambuscade; and a second trial had the same ill success. The night after this second failure the English went on board their vessels, abandoning in their retreat five pieces of cannon and a quantity of ammunition; and the fleet dropped two leagues down the river.1 Oct. 10. Oct. 11. 1 Major Walley's Journal, in Hutch. Hist., I. 554 et seq.; Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 76 et seq.; Mather, Magnalia, II. 48 et seq.; The Its repulse sion. The small-pox had appeared among the crews. cold had set in with a severity unusual for the early autumn, and "several of the men were so frozen in their hands and feet as to be disabled from service." It was believed that the expedition to Montreal, on which so much reliance had been placed, had miscarried and been abandoned; and a deserter reported that Frontenac had reinforced the garrison" with no fewer than thirty hundred men," — nearly twice as great a force as that of the assailants. The weather was getting constantly worse; the ships, with unskilful pilots, were in a perilous situation, among storms of snow that fell day by day. A council of war determined that, in such circum- and disperstances, to persist in the enterprise would be a tempting of Providence. An arrangement was made to give up some prisoners taken during the week, in exchange for English captives, who had been brought into Quebec by the Indians.1 Tempestuous weather damaged the fleet on the voyage home. One vessel was wrecked in the river; two or three foundered at sea; some others were blown off to the West Indies. The number of men lost in the expedition, by disease and casualties, was estimated at two hundred, though only thirty fell by the hands of the enemy before Quebec.2 The money sacrificed by Massachusetts was reckoned at fifty thousand pounds.3 Phips came back to Massachusetts mortified and distressed. There had been trouble enough 1 Frontenac's report to his superiors of his great success (Nov. 12, 1690) is in O'Callaghan, IX. 459. Such was the English statement. (Sir William Phips, as reported by Hutchinson, Hist., I. 401.) But Charlevoix supposed that six hundred English had fallen in the three actions. (Histoire, II. 89; comp. O'Callaghan, IX., 455, 459, 492.) 8 According to Jeremiah Dummer Nov. 19. (Defence of the Charters, 37), the expedition "cost £150,000 in money, and, what was infinitely more valuable, the lives of 1000 men." A thousand men would have been more than one in three of the force that went from Boston. Elsewhere (Letter to a Noble Lord, 13) he says that the cost was £50,000. It is surprising to find a man like Dummer falling into such an inaccuracy. This dismal discomfiture there before his departure. brought it almost beyond the point of possible endurance. The money for the outfit of the expedition had been mostly borrowed, in the imprudent expectation of a reimbursement from the enemy's spoils. The colonial treasurer had no funds. The returning soldiers needed their pay, and were almost in a state of mutiny. A heavy tax was assessed, but time would be necessary to collect it, and a delay of payments was out of the question. The government had recourse to an expedient which proved fruitful of mischief to the Colony through two generations. Issue of a paper currency. They issued a paper currency, called bills of Dec. 10. credit, in denominations from two shillings to ten pounds. These bills were receivable in payment of sums due to the treasury. They fell at once, so that the soldier who received them for their nominal value had to part with them at a discount of one third.1 At the time when the outcry was loudest, Phips showed his generosity, and at the same time did something to avert the odium which naturally fell upon him, by exchanging a considerable amount of hard money for those securities. It may be guessed that he was not a little relieved when it was presently decided that he should go to England on business for the Colony. The ostensible object was to obtain aid towards the renewal of the enterprise against Quebec. But it was also believed that he might be useful at court in soliciting the restoration of the ancient charter. It was fully time that something was done towards 1 "Many people being afraid that the government would in half a year be so overturned as to convert their bills of credit altogether into waste paper, the credit of them was thereby very much impaired, and they who first received them could make them yield little more than fourteen or sixteen shillings in the pound, from whence there arose those idle suspicions in the heads of many rude, ignorant, and unthinking folks concerning the use thereof, which to the incredible detriment of the province are not wholly laid aside unto this day." (Mather, Magnalia, II. 52, 55.) Mather was not deep in the theory of finance. 1 condition chusetts. restoring a legitimate and acknowledged government. The people were in that state of distress and alarm in which a questionable authority does not suffice. Depressed An exulting and ferocious enemy was mustered of Massaall along their border. Mourning was already in many of their houses. They had spent more than all their available money, and they had paid it for a miserable defeat. The war between France and England interfered with their supplies from the latter country, and the Navigation Laws forbade them to seek supplies elsewhere. While the vessels which they had been at so much cost to arm for the disastrous foreign expedition were prevented by the stormy weather from returning for their protection, their property, afloat along all the coast, was the prey of a swarm of French privateers, which had been so bold as even to land marauders on both shores of Long Island Sound. Heavy taxes were to be paid, and the paper substitute for money which was to pay them was driving out of the country what little remained of the coin which intelligibly expressed the worth of property and furnished a safe basis for the transactions of business. CHAPTER III. ON his return to England, where, almost two years before, he had left Increase Mather making interest at court for the restoration of the old charter,' Phips February found small encouragement to hope that that object would prove attainable. 1691. Plans for a new gov ernment in setts. 1689. Feb. 2. 2 This was not the fault of Mather, who had been unwearied in his exertions. At first the new King seemed to make fair professions, but they were in Massachu- general terms; and the ministers, in their hurry of business, had little thought to spare for New England. The convention, which presently declared itself a parliament, was advised by Sir Robert Sawyer, the Attorney-General, that "cities, universities, and the plantations" ought to "be secured against quo warrantos and surrenders, and their ancient rights restored." But the principle did not obtain a place in the Claim of Right, presented to the candidate for the throne.1 In an order issued by the new Privy Council for proclaiming the King and Queen in the plantations, "New England was passed over, the further consideration thereof being respited until the business of taking away the charter there shall be heard by the committee, and the true state thereof reported to his Majesty." "5 The Committee for Trade and Plantations, Feb. 19. Feb. 14. 3 1 See above, Vol. III. 564-566; Mather, Magnalia, II. 56. 2 Increase Mather, Brief Account concerning several of the Agents, &c., 5. 3 Commons' Journals, X. 17. 4 Commons' Journals of Feb. 412, and Lords' Journals of Feb. 9-12. 5 Privy Council Register, sub die. |