Vermont: A Study of IndependenceRobinson, Rowland Evans
History
Vermont: A Study of Independence
Robinson, Rowland Evans
Vermont -- History
Bougainville, abandoning the island, made a difficult night retreat to
St. John's, and from thence fell back with Roquemaure to the St.
Lawrence. Haviland was soon opposite Montreal, and in communication with
Murray, and both awaited the coming of Amherst's army. This force had
assembled at Oswego in July, and numbered something more than 10,000
men, exclusive of about 700 Indians under Sir William Johnson, and had
embarked on Lake Ontario on the 10th of August, and within five days
reached Oswigatchee. After the capture by five gunboats of a French
armed brig that threatened the destruction of the batteaux and
whaleboats, the army continued its advance to Fort Levis, near the head
of the rapids. Amherst invested the fort, and opened fire upon it from
land and water; and when for three days rocky islet and wooded shore had
been shaken by the thunder of the cannon that splintered the wooden
walls, the French commandant, Pouchot, was compelled to surrender the
ruined works and his garrison. Johnson's Indians were so enraged at not
being allowed to kill the prisoners that three fourths of them went
home.[23] There was no further resistance from the French, but there was
yet a terrible enemy to be encountered in the long and dangerous rapids
that must be descended. Several were passed with but slight loss; but in
the most perilous passage of the last three, forty-seven boats were
wrecked, several damaged, some artillery, ammunition, and stores lost,
and eighty-four men drowned in the angry turmoil of wild waters. When
these perils were past, an uneventful and unopposed voyage ensued, till
on the 6th of September the army landed at Lachine, and, marching to the
city, encamped before its walls.
The defenses of Montreal were too weak to resist a siege; the troops,
abandoned by the militia, too few to give battle to the three armies
that hemmed them in; and there was nothing left for Vaudreuil but
surrender. Some of the terms of capitulation proposed by him were
rejected by Amherst, who demanded that "the whole garrison of Montreal
and all the French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall
not serve again during the war." In answer to the remonstrances of
Vaudreuil and his generals he said: "I am fully resolved, for the
infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages
to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard-of barbarities in the whole
progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant
breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world, by this capitulation,
my detestation of such practices."[24]
Vaudreuil yielded, as perforce he must, and on the 8th of September
signed the capitulation by which Canada passed into the possession of
England. The French officers, civil and military, the troops and
sailors, were to be sent to France, and the inhabitants were to be
protected in their property and religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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