been in impatient earnest as to this business.1 Apparently the Tory ministers, who had been scheming to arrest Marlborough's great series of victories in Europe, and withdrawing his troops, wished to compensate this proceeding, and protect their popularity, by so striking an exploit of their own as would have been the conquest of New France; and it would have been a special satisfaction to the Queen's new favorite, Mrs. Masham, if at the same time that she distressed her discarded rival by the recall of the great Duke from his triumphs on the continent, she could have raised her brother to consequence as the winner of a new empire for England in America, and gratified Harley, her kinsman, by the glory which that conquest would have shed upon his administration. February St. John's mind seems to have been filled with August. this scheme during half of the first year of his official life, till it failed. No one was informed of it, so he writes to Hunter, Governor of New York, Feb. 6. in a letter of which he sent a copy to Dudley, except the Queen, himself, and his colleague, Lord Dartmouth. "It is my favorite project," he says, "which I have been driving on ever since I came last into business, what will be an immense and lasting advantage to our country, if it succeeds, and what, if it fails, will perhaps be particularly prejudicial to me." Those who were to be employed in the expedition were made to understand that it was destined for a landing in the south of France. Sealed instructions were prepared for the naval commander, not to be examined by him till he should reach the fortieth degree of latitude. When, after some delay, at which St. John constantly and passionately ex April 10. 1 Yet it seems a very different view of St. John's object was entertained, according to Grahame, who does not give his authority for the statement. Harley. subsequently affirmed, in a memorial to 66 the Queen, that the whole affair was a contrivance of Lord Bolingbroke and the Lord Chancellor Harcourt to defraud the public of twenty thousand pounds. (Comp. Smith, History of New York, 131.) presses his vexation, Nicholson sailed with the instructions to Dudley and Hunter to hasten their preparations, the Secretary's nerves were somewhat quieted, but his irritability returned as the preparations for so great an expedition proved to require no little time. He "must be forgiven," he writes to the General, if more uneasy than ordinary upon this account. the Queen is so herself." They "earnestly contemplate the several vanes."1 But 1 May 1. The British statesman's impetuosity was responded to with genuine animation on the other side of the water. A Congress of six officers, over which Dudley presided, was held at New London to arrange the details of the enterprise. To raise money, the General Court of Massachusetts, which was in session when 2 June 21. Zeal of Mas the fleet arrived, resolved on borrowing, for two sachusetts. years, on bills of credit to the amount of forty thousand pounds. An immediate levy of nine hundred "effective was ordered. A price was established for provisions; and when this caused them to be con men 3 I take these facts and extracts from a series of nearly a hundred letters, which, down to the present time, have remained unobserved in the Letter Book of the Secretary of the Home Department. The first paper consists of twenty closely written pages of instructions to Governor Hunter, bearing the date of Feb. 6, 1711: the last, dated November 2 of the same year, consists of "directions for landing and taking a strict survey of the remainder of her Majesty's stores now on board the several transports in the Thames, from North America," returned from the ill-fated expedition. The papers exhibit an extraordinary amount of care and anxiety expended in the preparations for the enterprise. The Secretary's extreme eagerness to push it forward, his repeated and urgent ap June 12. peals to all departments of the gov- 3 A proclamation of Dudley, June 12, promised to every officer and soldier "a coat, breeches, stockings, shoes with buckles, two colored shirts, colored neck-cloths, and hat, gratis," and "booty, houses, lands,' &c., to all who should "distinguish themselves." July 7. 2 1 cealed, a law was passed, commanding the seizure of them and authorizing forcible entry for the purpose.1 An embargo was laid to suppress intelligence of the design, and secure a supply of seamen. An order was issued" to impress all bakers, brewers, coopers, &c., who cannot or will not supply the public in their way at the stated prices." A proclamation of the Governor required the selectmen of towns to send every day July 3. July 22. July 18. meat and vegetables to be bought by the commissaries for six thousand men encamped on Noddle's Island.3 There was a voluntary agreement among the citizens to eat no fresh meat till the fleet should be supplied. Three Iroquois sachems came to Boston to consult respecting the plan of the campaign. A day for July 16. fasting and prayer was appointed. The enactment of a severe law against harboring deserters did not prevent the admiral from complaining, with an arrogance which has sometimes been observed in the English naval service, and demanding that there should be a press of seamen to make up his loss, a demand, however, with which it was not thought prudent to attempt. to comply. The admiral could not himself impress seamen in New England, by reason of a standing prohibition of the Privy Council to this effect.1 1696. Dec. 3. 1 This [July 8] being Sunday, nobody would do any work, although the troops were in want of bread.” (King, Journal of the Expedition.) 2 Dudley's proclamation of the embargo is in the Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1870, 206. 3 Colonel King thinks it worth while to relate (Journal, &c.) that, July 4, “the Brigadier was invited to a Commencement at the College at Cambridge, near Boston, where he assisted for no other reason than to put the people of the Colony in humor to comply with the present necessary demands of the troops." 4 4 Records of the General Court, sub dieb.; comp. letters of Dudley to St. John, of July 11, July 25, and Sept. 3, 1711, in British Colonial Papers. On the same day (July 25), when Dudley wrote to the minister of the happy prospects with which "three days will despatch the fleet and forces in good health and vigor,” Richard King, " Colonel of her Majesty's train of artillery,'' sent him a very different report. In his judgment, expressed in a full "Journal of the Expedition," the prospect was not flattering, and this was owing not only to "the misfortune that the 1711. Aug. 20. Disastrous tion. The provisioning was done with extraordinary celerity, and the fleet left Boston Harbor, conveying seven thousand well-appointed troops, regular and July 30. provincial. General (soon to be Lord) Hill, brother of the lady of the bedchamber to the weak Queen, was the incompetent commander. In three weeks the fleet was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Proceeding up that river, it lost its way in a fog, and then a high wind began to set the ships towards the northern bank. The pilots, New England ship-masters, had undertaken their task unwillingly, not pretending to failure of much knowledge of the eddies and soundings of the expedi the stream. When they were some thirty miles. up the river, the admiral gave orders for the ships to lie to, heading towards the south. The pilots afterwards insisted that this was contrary to their judgment. The fate of the superb expedition was settled without much delay. It did not come within many leagues of Quebec, nor come near enough to the settlements to be attacked from them, nor to distribute among them the printed proclamation in the French language, which the General had prepared to tempt their loyalty with the usual promises and threats. By midnight of the second day after entering the river, ten or eleven ships had drifted upon ledges of rock, where they went to pieces, and nearly a thousand persons were drowned, among whom were thirty-one com Colonies were not informed of our coming two months sooner," which to an unprejudiced person might have seemed a sufficient cause, but to "the interestedness, ill-nature, and sourness of these people, whose government, doctrine, and manners, whose hypocrisy and canting, are insupportable. 'Tis easy," he thought, "to determine the respect and obedience her Majesty may reasonably expect from them for the future; and how Aug. 22. missioned officers of various rank, and thirty-five women.1 With the vessels which escaped, including all that belonged to the royal navy, the disheartened admiral sailed down to the mouth of the river.2 Aug. 25. Sept. 8. He and his captains still hoped to cover their disgrace by an attempt upon Placentia in Newfoundland; but on a reconsideration they determined unanimously in a council of war of nine navy officers and nine colonels, with the general and admiral, that this scheme also must be given up, for lack of a sufficiency of provisions.3 What remained of the provincial force sailed for Boston, to excite loud complaints of the admiral's mismanagement; while he and the general went to England to excuse themselves by representing that the Massachusetts people had been tardy and penurious in fitting out the fleet. Sept. 16. 4 Nicholson, who, in accordance with the strategy before adopted on the like occasion, had led a force from Connecticut and New York towards Lake Champlain to operate against Montreal, received intelligence of the disaster which had taken place lower down the river, in season to withdraw out of reach of the attack which Vaudreuil was preparing to make upon him with his undivided force, as 1 Charlevoix (II. 357) erroneously puts the number of drowned at nearly three thousand. He inserts a copy of Hill's proclamation. 2 Aug. 25, 1811, a Council of War, consisting of the Admiral (Sir Hovenden Walker) and eight of his captains, decided unanimously "that, by reason of the ignorance of the pilots, it is wholly impracticable to go up the River St. Lawrence with the men-of-war and transports as far as Quebec, as also the uncertainty and rapidity of the currents, as by fatal experience we have found.' (British Colonial Papers.) 3 This Council was held on board Journal, &c.) |