A Half-Century of Conflict

DR. PARK MAN’S Half-Century of Conflict ¹ fills the gap between Count Frontenac and Montcalm and Wolfe; the period being the first half of the last century. It is not difficult to understand why the author left the annals of this time unwritten until the story of the downfall of French power had been told ; for, interesting and important as the history of British and French America in the early part of the eighteenth century may be, it pales in interest and importance before the great events which led to the fall of Quebee. The annals of the whole first half of the century could have been spared better than the story of the next ten years could have been spared. The conflict which opened with the bloody scene of Baddock’s defeat ; which passed on to Dieskau’s defeat; which embraced the capture of Fort William Henry, whose direful conclusion stained indelibly the white flag of Fiance ; which included the repulse of Abercrombie ; and which, the tide inexorably turning in the reduction of Louisbourg, terminated in the decisive victory of the British upon the Plains of Abraham, had a dramatic character such as none other has ever borne in English-written annals. It has the scenery. the picturesqueness, the characters, the motives, the continuity as well as the shifting climaxes of the drama, and the curtain fell upon the most dramatic spectacle in the history of America. To such a master of scenic description as Parkman, the temptation to skip to the concluding and most picturesque act of all must have been irresistible.

Far different is a conflict which drags on for half a century, and a scene which stretches from Cape Breton to the Rocky Mountains: both are too vast for the mind or the eye to take in at once. We can see but one thing at a time ; the whole is broken up, and the parts are disconnected. The plan of the work betrays this and suffers from it; for we skip from Detroit to Deerfield, from Deerfield to Acadia, from Acadia to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thence to the Gull of Mexico, and from the mouth of the Mississippi back to its head waters. Such is the ground covered by the first volume only; in the second volume we barely stop short of the Little Rosebud. No work can maintain its logical sequence or its rhetorical continuity amid such scene-shifting, and where the subject and the characters change with the interludes. The derided unities avenge themselves; and though there is a connection between a defense of Louisbourg and the discovery of the Big Horn range, it is a connection which we take on faith, but which, at the moment of perusal is not present to the mind. To insure unity and uninterrupted sequence, there must exist a positive, manifest, constant, self-assertive motive, from which everything emanates of its own motion, to which it returns, and of which it is the expression; a cause which has not to be kept in mind by any effort of the reader, but which thrusts itself before him, stands in his path, and confronts him at every step. But, with the exception of Queen Anne’s war and the war of the Austrian Succession, where are the positive, visible, aggressive historical impulses which, throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, arrest the eye and irresistibly rivet the mind upon themselves ? They exist, but they are less than half revealed, and the reader is conscious of ceaseless effort to maintain connection between the dissociated parts. This, the fault of the subject, is the misfortune of the author.

The conflict of this half-century was a fifty years’ game of bluff, whose outward and visible signs, with the two exceptions noted, never rose in dignity above the bickerings, broils, scuffles, and affrays of the overreaching gamesters. The jousts, the gentle and joyous tournaments, the marching armies, the pitched battles, and the death struggle belong to another stage. It was a conflict of the hatchet on the border, and of deceit and chicanery in the closet, where ignorance vied with indifference to colonial welfare, —a conflict in which the combatants upon one side were meddling priests, greedy traders, and deluded savages, and upon the other were stingy legislatures, greedier traders, and harried frontiersmen ; and of these components none showed spirit or manliness except those upon whom fell the payment of the stakes, the frontiersmen and the savages. So far as open, honorable conflict is concerned, it was the play of King Henry V., with “ God for Harry ! England and St. George! ” left out, and nothing retained but “ Alarums.” We wade through page after page of that which makes up local history, but which was incidental, merely, to the game between the nations which was going on with the blinds down; and local history so ill recorded by the generation that wrought it as leaves the reader with only a half-defined notion of the events themselves, and with the suspicion that, since the actors took so little pains to perpetuate them, their importance may be greater at the close of the nineteenth century than it was at the beginning of the eighteenth. This is not history ; it is barely chronicle.

It is true that this desultory conflict is enlivened by the Queen Anne and Austrian Succession wars, and that armaments worthy of the great powers appear upon the scene : navies cover the seas, and armies are marshaled upon the lines yet to be made famous by Wolfe and Montcalm. Notwithstanding this, a spell of timidity, hesitation, and disappointment pervades the atmosphere; nothing conies to fruition, everything turns out abortive; armies disband before reaching Lake Champlain, and fleets turn back before sighting Quebec or Annapolis. Petticoat politics at home, political and bed-chamber favorites in command of armed men, and dullness, — dullness characterizing diplomacy, administration, and field service everywhere. The only men who evince a comprehension of the situation, and the value of that to which the courtiers are blind, are a handful of Jesuits buried in the woods, the traders of Albany, Detroit, and Michillimackinac, Shirley the lawyer, Pepperrell the merchant, the Gloucester fishermen, and the settlers whose scalps are in danger. While a continent and the future are at stake, Europe is awake to nothing but duchies and the fleeting hour.

One great reason for the American chapter in the history of this half-century being so devoid of interest is, that the hostilities were perpetrated in times of peace. This kept the actors within bounds, not to say hiding: it permitted no formation of heavy columns, no great operations, but restricted the contending parties to a miserable guerrilla-like warfare, in which the ignorant savages were mercilessly used as stool-pigeons, upon whom the blame was to he cast in the event of detection, and in which the loss falling upon isolated and distant settlers affected little the body of society. Along the line of the Hudson and the Mohawk, the Dutch traders actually controlled “ hostilities ” in the interest of trade, and kept up such an understanding with the French and Abenakis that tranquillity was maintained on their borders, while those of New England were smoking. The whole business is a wretched one, which even the two wars cannot redeem from disgust. Parkman is unquestionably aware of this, and exhausts his art to lend interest to the barren and repulsive theme by bringing into prominence the few noteworthy events and characteristics, such as Lovewell’s fight, the siege of Louisbourg, the search for the Pacific, and the disastrous expedition of the Due d’Anville ; but the reign of dullness has proved too much even for him, for he abandons the contest in a tame and purposeless final chapter, —

In point of interest, therefore, this work does not compare with the preceding ones of the series, and it is not to be named in the same breath, in any respect, with the author’s masterpiece, Montcalm and Wolfe. It serves its purpose as a connecting link, but, except as a clear and convenient compendium of events necessary to fill a hiatus in his history, it adds little to the value of his works. Indeed, after The Old Régime, Count Frontenae, and Montcalm and Wolfe, how could he augment the essential knowledge of the subject ? The topography and physical characteristics of the theatre of action, the resources of the two countries, the modes of living pursued by the different peoples, the motives that actuated them, their objects of endeavor, their religions and politics, their manners, their European courts, their diversity of political constitution, — everything had been brought out, as no other man had ever done, long before this Half-Cent ury of Conflict saw the light. The writing of this work must, have been more or less a perfunctory task, and this master has encountered that which others before him have had to succumb to, — failure to equal himself. The dinners of Lucullus can be compared only with those of Lucullus, and Packman’s works are to be judged only by those of Parkman.

The most striking and unquestionably the most interesting event narrated in these pages is the reduction of Louisbourg by Pepperrell, a portion of the book already known to readers of The Atlantic. This was the most important military affair that had then taken place in North America, and it would have affected most profoundly the destinies of New France had it not been robbed of its importance by the imbecility of Whitehall. Posterity learns with stupefaction two things : first, that the downfall of the French power in America was actually made impending by the capture of the great stronghold, Louishourg, by a parcel of New England provincials, moved thereto by a lawyer, and led by a merchant ignorant of the first principle of war; and secondly, that after the Lord had delivered this fortress into onr hands the English rejected the godsend and handed it back to the French; for, on the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the place was returned to France in exchange for Madras, then a petty factory in the East Indies, — whereby the work of 1745 had all to be done over again in 1758. Dullness, short-sightedness, political jealousy, and indifference to the well being of the colonies made short work with colonial foresight and energy. In connection with this, we think that Mr. Turkman gives too much credit to the British fleet, which at most was auxiliary merely to the land forces, and that he adopts a tone, in his narration of the siege, hardly commensurate with the gravity of the undertaking. Unquestionably, there is something downright ludicrous in the fact of a crowd of farm boys and shopkeepers setting sail with the avowed object of taking one of the strongest fortresses in the world, a masterpiece of the Vauban system ; and this without heavy artillery, and with their vessels ballasted with cannon balls which were to he fired from guns that they expected to take from the fortification itself. But what is not ludicrous is, that the event justified their self-reliance, and that the landing and subsequent steps did not betray the ignorance of greenhorns, but that the operations under Pepperrell compare favorably with those at a later date under Amherst, who had Wolfe for his right hand. Either intuition and native wit supplied in a marvelous degree the absence of technical knowledge, or there was some one on the ground who had the requisite skill. One thing is certain,— there was no lack of the essential matter, spirit.

In these pages, too, is to be found the Chevy Chare of the New England border. We owe to Parkman the revival — alas that this expression must be used of what once was a household word around Massachusetts hearths ! — of the story of Love well’s fight. How those who went out to shear came near being shorn ; how the wounded Lovewell and his thirty-two neighbors stood at bay in the ambuscade the livelong day, cut off from human aid, and fighting with their faces towards home ; how young Frye, the chaplain, scalped his Indian, and afterwards, wounded unto death, kept praying for his comrades, as he lay in his blood; how Keyes, unable longer to keep his feet by reason of three wounds, in order to prevent the savages from getting his scalp got painfully into a canoe and drifted away before the wind, as he supposed to die, but, as the event proved, to survive; how Robbins had his loaded gun placed beside him by his departing fellows, saying, The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I ’ll kill another of ’em if 1 can ; ” the death of the war-chief Paugus, and the Mournful Elegy of Frye’s sweetheart, — all this is told in a way that makes the blood course more quickly, the eye snap fire, and the teeth close hard-set. Parkman, with consummate art, has brought into bold relief the fortitude and fierce resolution of the race-blood which, when in desperate straits, has rarely failed to wrest victory from defeat, and which has so often taught the enemy that it is never to he feared more than when caught at a disadvantage. He has done something more : he has insured immortality to the men who, that bitter day, wrought their brave deed in the dark forest beside the lake.

The Acadian story is narrated clearly, and the facts are so sustained by reference to the original documents, French as well as English, that surely there should he an end of controversy. Now that both sides have exhausted themselves, there may be a pause, until at least the Abbé Casgrain and Rameau de Saint-Pierre get breath for another reply. There is, nevertheless, little ground to hope for a complete cessation of hostilities, for the Acadian question lias taken its place as one of those choice controversial morsels which no literary gentleman in New England or the Maritime Provinces can afford to be without ; and though the heavy firing is over for this generation, we expect to hear dropping shots on the subject for the rest of our days.

The story, as we have seen, lacks the apparent continuity of history, and the interest is, consequently, not sustained throughout. To this, perhaps, is due some inequality of style that is noticeable, for it is too much to expect of a writer that he shall maintain interest where none can be aroused. In the three marked characteristics of Parkman — that is to say, in exhaustive study of his theme, correct analysis of the underlying political situation, and picturesque description— we can perceive no loss of power, no deterioration. In the last particular, he is as apt as ever to

We doubt not that we express the feeling of the whole English-speaking world of literature when we congratulate the author upon the completion of the imperishable monument which commemorates his own noble endeavor and the glory of the race to which he belongs. It is rare indeed that a literary project conceived in youth is so comprehensive in its character, and is pursued so steadfastly to its final achievement after nearly fifty years of toil, under discouragements of physical privation induced by the very devotion which led the young author at the outset to turn his back upon civilized life, and to cast in his lot for a time with the race whose ancestors bore so conspicuous a part in the history which he was to unfold. Nor can one fail to mark also the wise judgment which led Dr. Parkman, holding his great plan inviolable, to mark his progress by successive publications, rather than to keep his material in reserve for one impressive issue. From the beginning straight to the end rise the monuments which betoken his faithful toil, his tenacity of purpose, his conscientious pursuit of knowledge, and the gains that he wrested from grudging time. He heaped his cairns as he pursued his way.