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A DIALOGUE IN HADES.

A Parallel of Military Errors, of Which the French
and English Armies Were Guilty, During the
Campaign of 1759, in Canada.

ATTRIBUTED TO CHEVALIER JOHNSTONE.







Published under the Auspices of the
Literary and Historical Society of Quebec

[Reprinted.]

Quebec:
Printed at the "Morning Chronicle" Office.
1887.




[The original of this manuscript is deposited in the French war
archives, in Paris; a copy was, with the permission of the French
Government, taken in 1855, and deposited in the Library of the
Legislative Assembly of Canada. The Literary and Historical Society
of Quebec, through the kindness of Mr. Todd, the Librarian, was
permitted to have communication thereof. This document is supposed to
have been written about the year 1765, that is five years after the
return to France from Canada of the writer, the Chevalier Johnstone,
a Scottish Jacobite, who had fled to France after the defeat at
Culloden, and obtained from the French monarch, with several other
Scotchmen, commissions in the French armies. In 1748, says _Francisque
Michel_,[A] "he sailed from Rochefort as an Ensign with troops going
to Cape Breton; he continued to serve in America until he returned to
France, in December, 1760, having acted during the campaign of 1759, in
Canada, as aide-de-camp to Chevalier de Levis. On Levis being ordered
to Montreal, Johnstone was detached and retained by General Montcalm
on his staff, on account of his thorough knowledge of the environs
of Quebec, and particularly of Beauport, where the principal works
of defence stood, and where the whole army, some 11,000 men, were
entrenched, leaving in Quebec merely a garrison of 1500. The journal
is written in English, and is not remarkable for orthography or purity
of diction; either Johnstone had forgotten or had never thoroughly
known the language. The style is prolix, sententious, abounding in
quotations from old writers. This document had first attracted the
attention of one of the late historians of Canada, the Abbe Ferland,
who attached much importance to it, as calculated to supply matters of
detail and incidents unrecorded elsewhere. Colonel Margry, in charge of
the French records, had permitted the venerable writer, then on a visit
to Paris, to make extracts from it; some of which extracts, the abbe
published at the time of the laying of the St. Foy Monument, in 1862.
The Chevalier Johnstone differs _in toto_ from the opinions expressed
by several French officers of regulars, respecting the conduct of the
Canadian Militia, in 1759, ascribing to their valour, on the 13th
September, the salvation of a large portion of the French army. He has
chosen the singular, though not unprecedented mode of the Dialogue,
to recapitulate the events of a campaign in which he played a not
inconsiderable part."--J. M. LEMOINE.]




  [Published under the auspices of the Literary and Historical Society
                              of Quebec.]

                          A DIALOGUE IN HADES.

 A PARALLEL OF MILITARY ERRORS, OF WHICH THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH ARMIES
          WERE GUILTY, DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF 1759, IN CANADA.


THE MARQUIS DE MONTCALM:--Having ardently desired a conversation with
you, sir, upon the operations of a campaign which proved to both of us
so fatal, I have sought you continually amongst the shades ever since I
descended here, where I soon followed you.

GENERAL WOLFE:--I can assure you, sir, I was equally impatient to meet
with you. Some of my countrymen, arrived here since the battle of the
13th September, informed me that there was only an interval of a few
hours in our sharing the same hard fate. They gave me some accounts
of that event which joined Canada to the British dominions; but as
they had a very imperfect knowledge of the circumstances, and entirely
ignorant of your plan of operations, I have little information from
them, and I am heartily glad that chance at last has procured me the
pleasure of seeing you.

MONTCALM:--Will you permit me, sir, before our conversation becomes
serious, to offer some reflections upon the difference in our destiny.
Your nation rendered you the greatest honours; your body was conveyed
to London, and buried there magnificently in Westminster Abbey,
amongst your kings. Generous Britons erected to your memory a superb
monument over your grave, at public expense; and your name, most
dear to your countrymen, is ever in their mouths, accompanied with
praise and regret. But in my country what a strange indifference?
What sensation did my death make upon my compatriots? My conduct
denounced and censured without measure, is the continual subject of
conversation for gossiping fools and knaves, who form the majority in
all communities, and prevail against the infinitely small number to be
found of honest, judicious, impartial men, capable of reflection. The
Canadians and savages who knew the uprightness of my soul, ever devoted
to the interests of my beloved king and country, they alone rendered
me justice, with a few sincere friends, who, not daring to oppose
themselves openly to the torrent of my enemies, bewailed in secret my
unhappy fate, and shed on my tomb their friendly tears.

WOLFE:--In this blessed abode, inaccessible to prejudice, I vow to you,
sir, I envy your condition, notwithstanding the horrible injustice
and ingratitude of your countrymen. What can give more pleasure and
self-satisfaction than the esteem and approbation of honest men? You
were severely regretted and lamented by all those who were capable of
discerning and appreciating your superior merit, talents, and eminent
qualities. Disinterested persons of probity must respect your virtue.
All officers versed in the art of war will justify your military
tactics, and your operations can be blamed only by the ignorant. Were
my army consulted, they would be as many witnesses in your favour. Your
humanity towards prisoners won you the heart of all my soldiers. They
saw with gratitude and veneration your continual care and vigilance to
snatch them from out of the hands of the Indians, when those barbarians
were ready to cut their throats, and prepared to make of human flesh
their horrible banquets; refusing me even tears at my death, they
weeped and bewailed your hard fate; I see in my mausoleum the proof
only of human weakness! What does that block of marble avail to me in
my present state? The monument remains, but the conqueror has perished.
The affection, approbation and regret of the worthiest part of mankind
is greatly preferable and much above the vain honours conferred by a
blind people, who judge according to the event, and are incapable to
analyse the operations. I was unknown to them before the expedition
which I commanded in Canada; and if fortune, to whom I entirely owe my
success, had less favoured me, perhaps, like Byng, I would have been
the victim of a furious and unruly populace. The multitude has and can
have success only for the rule of their judgment.

MONTCALM:--I am much obliged to you, sir, for your favourable opinion
of me. Let us leave weak mortals to crawl from error to error, and
deify to-day what they will condemn to-morrow. It is at present, when
the darkness is dispelled from before our eyes, that we can contemplate
at leisure the passions of men, who move as the waves of the sea, push
on each other and often break upon the rocks; and in our present state,
when all prejudices are at an end, let us examine impartially the
operations of 1759, which was the epocha of the loss to France of her
northern colonies in America.

WOLFE:--Most willingly, sir, and to show my frankness, I own to you
I was greatly surprised on arriving with the English fleet at Quebec
without meeting with any opposition by the French in the river St.
Lawrence.

MONTCALM:--You had reason to be so. It was not my fault that you did
not meet with many obstacles in your way. I proposed to have a redoubt
and battery erected upon Cape Tourmente, which is a rock above fifty
feet high, facing the Traverse at the east[B] end of the Island of
Orleans, where all the vessels cross from the north to the south side
of the St. Lawrence river. They are obliged to approach very near the
Cape before they enter into the Traverse, and its height above the
men-of-war would have secured it against the effect of the artillery.
Besides, this rock, almost perpendicular, commanding all round it,
the fort would have been impregnable, and not susceptible of being
besieged. Thus the first of your ships which approached to pass the
Traverse would have been raked by the plunging fire of the battery from
stern to bowsprit, and must have been sunk. I had likewise the project
of placing a battery and a redoubt upon the upper point of the bay
which is opposite to the west end of _Isle aux Coudres_. The current
between this island and the main land being incredibly rapid at low
water, all the vessels coming up the river must have cast anchor there
to wait until the next tide; and my artillery upon the point of that
bay would have battered your ships at anchor from fore to aft; have
put in a most terrible confusion your ships, who could not have taken
up their anchors without being instantly dashed to pieces against the
rocks by the violence of the current, forced, as they would have been
by it, to have their bowsprits always pointed to the battery, without
being able to fire at it. Your fleet would have had no knowledge of the
battery until they were at anchor, so you may easily judge how it would
have distressed them. I proposed this, but I did not command in chief;
it was the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor General of Canada, who should
have ordered it to be put into execution.

WOLFE:--If they had executed your project, it would have puzzled us,
and retarded for some time our operations.

MONTCALM:--That was all I could wish for, as I was always sensible of
the great advantage, in certain situations, of gaining time from the
enemy, especially in such a climate as Canada, where the summer is
so short that it is impossible to keep the field longer than from the
month of May till the beginning of October, and your fleet arrived at
_Isle aux Coudres_ at the end of June.

WOLFE:--There is no doubt that you are in the right. Our fleet arrived
in the river St. Lawrence six weeks too late, which is commonly the
fate of all great naval expeditions. Fleets are seldom ready to sail at
the time appointed; and this often renders fruitless the best concocted
enterprise by sea, from the uncertainty of the arrival of the army at
its destination. The smallest delay is often dangerous, as it gives
the enemy the time to prepare themselves for defence, without hurry or
confusion.

MONTCALM:--I will not conceal from you, sir, that I always looked
upon the distribution you made of your army upon your landing near
Quebec, as diametrically opposed to the established principles in
castrametation. It is a known axiom in the