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Baron Dieskau, a German veteran who had served under Saxe, was made their general; and with him went the new governor of French America, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, destined to succeed Duquesne, whose health was failing under the fatigues of his office.
He was never to know if this conjecture was true. To Vaudreuil came a repetition of the detested order that he should defer to Montcalm on all questions of war; and moreover that he should not take command in person except when the whole body of the militia was called out; nor, even then, without consulting his rival. His ire and vexation produced an access of jealous self-assertion, and drove him into something like revolt against the ministerial command. "If the English attack Quebec, I shall always hold myself free to go thither myself with most of the troops and all the militia and Indians I can assemble. On arriving I shall give battle to the enemy; and I shall do so again and again, till I have forced him to retire, or till he has entirely crushed me by excessive superiority of numbers. My obstinacy in opposing his landing will be the more
Lord Howe, pushing up the river from Schenectady with troops and militia, found nothing but an abandoned slaughter-field. Vaudreuil reported the affair to the Court, and summed up the results with pompous egotism: "I have ruined the plans of the English; I have disposed the Five Nations to attack them; I have carried consternation and terror into all those parts."
Vaudreuil gave Bougainville a letter introducing him to the Colonial Minister in high terms of praise: "He is in all respects better fitted than anybody else to inform you of the state of the colony. I have given him my instructions, and you can trust entirely in what he tells you." Concerning Doreil he wrote to the Minister of War: "I have full confidence in him, and he may be entirely trusted.
The Princesse de Lamballe, although she did not quarrel with the Queen, was alarmed at the establishment of the Comtesse Jules at Court, and did not form, as her Majesty had hoped, a part of that intimate society, which was in turn composed of Mesdames Jules and Diane de Polignac, d'Andlau and de Chalon, and Messieurs de Guignes, de Coigny, d'Adhemar, de Besenval, lieutenant-colonel of the Swiss, de Polignac, de Vaudreuil, and de Guiche; the Prince de Ligne and the Duke of Dorset, the English ambassador, were also admitted.
John in increasing numbers, and Boishebert and the missionaries soon found themselves reduced to sore straits in their endeavors to supply them with the necessaries of life. The Marquis de Vaudreuil was determined to hold the St. John river country as long as possible.
Had the French planted some guns on a plateau, high up on the side of the mountains, they could have done great damage by a plunging fire; but Vaudreuil had neglected to take this measure, and the fleet passed up in safety, the manner in which they were handled and navigated astonishing the Canadians, who had believed it to be impossible that large ships could be taken up.
Vaudreuil grew confident. "The breaking up of the camp at Montmorenci," he says, "and the abandonment of the intrenchments there, the reimbarkation on board the vessels above Quebec of the troops who had encamped on the south bank, the movements of these vessels, the removal of the heaviest pieces of artillery from the batteries of Point Levi, these and the lateness of the season all combined to announce the speedy departure of the fleet, several vessels of which had even sailed down the river already.
The latter was the solitary prize taken by the allied Great Armada in the English Channel, in 1779. Official letter of the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Guérin: Histoire de la Marine Française, vol. v. p. 513. See United Service Journal, 1834, Part II. pp. 109 and following. See letter of Sir Howard Douglas in United Service Journal, 1834, Part II. p. 97; also "Naval Evolutions," by same author.
Louis," which had been bestowed upon the first Vaudreuil who held an official position in Canada, which relic is now to be seen in the Château de Ramezay.
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