François-Gaston de Lévis
François-Gaston de Lévis (born August 20, 1719 at the Château d ' Ajac , Département Aude , † November 20, 1787 in Arras ) was a French officer who served in the French army during the French and Indian War against New France should defend British forces.
biography
François-Gaston de Lévis came from a well-known French aristocratic family that was based in Ajac in the south of France . He had already proven himself as an officer during the War of the Polish Succession and the War of Austrian Succession . During the Seven Years' War he was used on Canadian soil from 1756 to 1760 to defend New France. There he initially acted as deputy to the military commander-in-chief Louis-Joseph de Montcalm , after he had fallen in autumn 1759, then as his successor. Despite the great interim successes, which he was able to achieve again in the following spring, the final defeat could no longer be averted and he had to lay down his arms in the autumn of 1760 in front of superior British forces. He then returned to Europe and served there in some campaigns by the French army on German soil until the end of the Seven Years' War. After retiring from the army, he was installed as governor of Artois and two decades later was appointed Marshal of France .
In New France
1756 - posted to Canada
In the spring of 1756 Lévis was sent to Canada with some troop reinforcements. While still in France, he had been appointed deputy to the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief Louis-Joseph de Montcalm (1712–1759), whose apparently mutual sympathy he was able to acquire after a short time. The governor of New France Vaudreuil , who was informed by the French king about the dispatch of Montcalm and Lévis, had already objected in a letter of reply to their appointment as commanding officers because, in his opinion, they were not in a position to stand up as combatants who were continental and European to discontinue the particular circumstances of the North American theater of war. After both had arrived in Canada despite this objection, a deep dislike developed between Vaudreuil and Montcalm very soon. Lévis, however, managed to establish and maintain good relationships with both men. This enabled him to avoid being entangled in their quarrels.
1757 - At the Lac du Saint-Sacrement
As part of the military conflicts that took place in the following years over the possession of New France, Lévis was often to be found on the scene of significant events. Several times he was given the command of important undertakings, for example in the summer of 1757 during the fighting over the British Fort William Henry , located at the southern end of the Lac du Saint-Sacrement (English Lake George ) . There he led the 3,000-man French advance command that had been sent from Montcalm to enclose the fort. Previously, he had put together the gun park that was necessary for a successful outcome of the siege, and he had also organized the provision of the boats required for the transport of troops and material. After Montcalm had arrived with the French main contingent and the siege guns, the siege that had already started was intensified and the fort had to be handed over to the French troops a few days later. The defeated occupation was granted free retreat with military honors in the terms of surrender. The French Indian allies, who did not agree, disregarded the agreements made and attacked the retreating garrison soldiers and their escort. Despite the intervention of French officers, 70 to 180 soldiers and civilians were murdered. Many others have been abducted, injured or robbed. These events were later processed into literature by James Fenimore Cooper in his novel The Last of the Mohicans .
1758 - At the Great Lakes and at Fort Carillon
As a result of this and several other defeats, however, more regular units were sent from the motherland to reinforce the British colonies. After the arrival of these associations, the British should gradually succeed in turning the war around in the course of 1758. When planning the French defense strategy this year, however, the dispute between Vaudreuil and Montcalm should continue and escalate. The main point of contention was once again the question of what priorities should be set in the defense of New France. Montcalm always warned against a fragmentation of the already relatively weak own forces and pleaded for the abandonment of the outposts established beyond the Great Lakes , in order to enable a concentration of all available units in the lowlands of the Saint Lawrence River . Vaudreuil, who was born in Canada, did not agree with this purely military perspective, because for him such considerations jeopardized control over the economic hinterland of the colony, without which it would no longer be viable in the long term. In any case, Vaudreuil retained the upper hand in this conflict and was able to enforce his ideas about the planning of the next campaigns.
Montcalm was dispatched to Fort Carillon to shield the southern flank of Canada against a British invasion expected from this direction. Lévis, on the other hand, was to set out with a 3,000-strong mixed unit for the Great Lakes area in order to undertake a flanking relief attack against British-controlled areas. The troops under his command included 400 selected soldiers from the line troops, another 400 more from the regular colonial units, the rest of them were battle-tested Canadian militia units and Indian allies of the French. With this association, Lévis commanded a powerful armed force to fulfill his mission in the west, but the withdrawal of these troops also led to a serious weakening of Montcalm's position at Fort Carillon. Because this was supposed to repel the main British attack, but had only slightly more soldiers than Lévis himself. However, after more and more news had reached Canada that the British had gathered a vastly superior army in the Hudson Valley , this brought Vaudreuil to his to reconsider the previous position. Shortly after his departure, Lévis received the order to turn back immediately and instead to rush to Montcalm with his regular units as quickly as possible. Lévis therefore moved in with 400 of his elite soldiers in great haste in order to be able to strengthen their position before the arrival of the British invading army. He just managed to do this, because when he arrived at Fort Carillon on the evening of July 7th, the British troops had already sailed down the Lac du Saint-Sacrement and were now not far from the fort.
The force commanded by the British General James Abercrombie comprised over 15,000 men. Its core was made up of a little more than 6000 regular British soldiers, who on the following day also had to bear the brunt of the attack; the rest of the army consisted of American colonial units. Montcalm had the French defenders take up position on the site in front of the fort and then ordered the construction of field fortifications in this area. In the run-up to these fortifications, trenches were dug to make it more difficult for the British to advance through this terrain in an orderly manner. In addition, numerous trees had been felled, the pointed branches of which were supposed to act as a kind of wooden barbed wire fence in conjunction with a large number of driven posts. When Lévis arrived, this work was not yet finished and work on its completion was continued in great haste. In any case, the situation for the French defense lawyers was extremely precarious, for their provisions were only sufficient for a week; they would therefore not have been able to withstand a classic siege for very long. Also, because of their numerical inferiority, they would hardly have been able to offer serious resistance to cutting their connecting and supply lines by a British evasion maneuver. The impatience of the British commander, however, saved the French from this predicament, because Abercrombie did not even want to wait for the arrival of his artillery park, but instead ordered his troops to attack the well-entrenched defenders immediately. In the ensuing Battle of Carillon , Lévis then commanded the right wing of the French positions. After nearly four hours of fighting and the death of 2,000 of its soldiers, Abercrombie finally ordered the battle to be halted, which then ended in a precipitous British retreat. It was one of the last major defensive successes of the French, who had to accept the loss of their important sea fortress Louisbourg less than three weeks later .
1759 - Defender of Quebec
After the British had succeeded in opening the maritime gateway to Canada by taking the fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island last year , they were able to penetrate unhindered into the estuary of the Saint Lawrence River with a fleet in 1759 and at the end of June bring a large invading army commanded by General Wolfe ashore not far from Québec . When the British armed forces, led by James Murray, began their first military actions against the capital of New France, Lévis was faced directly with them in this early phase of the siege. When the British landed at the Montmorency Falls on the north bank of the Saint Lawrence River on July 31 and cracked down on his positions, he was able to break this attack by taking defensive measures early on. After the Canadian militia units under his command had been reinforced by regular soldiers, the British had to withdraw from this section of the bank after the heavy losses they suffered in the Battle of Beauport .
At the same time as the invasion from the seaside, British troops continued to attempt to advance to Canada via land routes. Fort Niagara , which had been besieged for several weeks, had to be surrendered to the British on July 26 , after the attempt at relief by a Canadian ranger army failed with great losses. On the same day, the remaining French garrison had to give up Fort Carillon and, like before, the main contingent withdrew to the north. The heartland of French Canada was acutely threatened by advancing British armies, both from the west and from the south. To counter this danger, Lévis was sent from Montcalm to Montreal to organize the defensive measures there. He left Québec on August 9th and moved west with a reinforcement of 800 men. However, the British operating in the western hinterland refrained from any further advance this year, so that there then no more major confrontations took place.
When, however, on September 13th the battle that was decisive for the outcome of the war took place on the Plains of Abraham at the gates of Québec , Lévis was not at the scene of the event, but stayed in Montreal. After Montcalm succumbed to the wounds he had suffered the morning after the battle, Lévis now assumed the role of the new commander-in-chief of the troops in New France on the basis of instructions from the French crown that had already been laid down in secret documents. After Québec was surrendered to the victorious British on September 18, he was only able to collect the defeated French troops and coordinate their retreat to Montreal. During the winter months, Lévis developed extensive activities there, with the intention of launching a counterattack in the following spring that would bring the city of Québec back into French hands. In addition to extensive training for his troops, this also included the acquisition of large quantities of supplies that were withdrawn from the Canadian outposts and brought to Montreal in preparation for the offensive.
1760 - besiegers of Québec
Lévis began his campaign to retake Québec as soon as the late winter conditions allowed it. On April 20, he withdrew from Montreal with his reorganized troops and on April 26, his force of almost 7,000 men arrived at Saint-Augustine , a few kilometers west of Sainte-Foy . The nearby British outposts withdrew from him and Lévis began to advance towards Québec with his troops. There he was awaiting an opponent in James Murray, whom he had faced in July 1759 during the initial phase of the siege of Quebec . Murray had stayed in town the previous fall as the commander of a small garrison of occupation, while most of the British siege army, along with the fleet, had withdrawn before the onset of winter. Instead of waiting for the French attack behind the city walls, Murray decided to face it in the open. He made the same fatal decision as Montcalm seven months earlier in the run-up to the battle on the Plains of Abraham. Not far from the site of this battle, the events of that time were almost repeated, this time with the opposite sign. Murray was able to counter Lévis with almost 4,000 regular soldiers, while Lévis could only muster around 5,000 men on the battlefield because some of his troops were far away from there due to a misunderstanding. Half of the French troops consisted of regular troops and the other half of Canadian militia units.
After hard battles that were extremely costly for both sides, the troops of Lévis finally succeeded in routing the British in the ensuing battle at Sainte-Foy , but without cutting off their retreat into the city. In their hasty escape, the British had to abandon all of their field artillery on the battlefield, and then the French began the siege of their own capital. The captured guns were now used against their former owners, but neither these nor the total available siege material was sufficient to force a surrender of the decimated British garrison. Lévis therefore limited himself to only including the British in Québec, but refrained from trying to take the city by means of an assault. Instead, he hoped that reinforcements would arrive from metropolitan France as soon as the ice in the confluence of the Saint Lawrence River would allow it. He had asked for this help himself in a written message the previous autumn and if the French navy had actually managed to get even a small fleet to support him during the first few weeks of May, then Murray would hardly have been able to withstand the siege any longer . In the second half of 1759, however, the French naval forces suffered two devastating defeats in Europe in the naval battles near Lagos and in the Bay of Quiberon , which were intended to massively limit their maritime scope for action. Although the French had sent a flotilla of six frigates to Canada from Bordeaux on April 10, only three ships were able to successfully break through the British coastal blockade and reach the Gulf of Saint Lawrence unmolested . There, however, they learned that the British naval forces had already penetrated the confluence of the Saint Lawrence River and blocked the access to Québec. The three frigates then withdrew to the Chaleur Bay , where they were later trapped by a superior British fleet in the mouth of the Restigouche River and destroyed in early July over the course of a battle lasting several days . This lost the only support fleet that Lévis could have brought help in his struggle to retake Québec.
A first British frigate had already appeared off Québec on May 8, and more followed in the next few days. After these ships had largely destroyed his river flotilla operating on the St. Lawrence River in mid-May, Lévis could no longer maintain the siege of the city and then withdrew with his troops to Montreal. In the following period he tried to stop the British armies advancing from three sides in the direction of Montreal by mobilizing all available forces, but in view of the now hopeless military situation and an ever increasing wave of desertions among his troops, this should no longer have any prospect of success. It was mainly the Canadian militiamen and Indian allies who turned their backs on the defense efforts of Lévis, but increasingly also soldiers from the regular regiments. At the beginning of September he tried in vain to stop General Amherst , who was advancing across the St. Lawrence River with his troops on a boat flotilla, at the rapids of Lachine . His appeal to the most important Indian allies to support the French armed forces once again in this difficult situation, however, was no longer complied with. Instead, they withdrew without even answering Lévis again and left him with a wampum belt presented as a gift, as he himself reported in his diary. After that, all he had left was to retire to Montreal. There he was then confronted with the 2,000 remaining soldiers of a six-fold superior British force. On the fortified Île Sainte-Hélène he wanted to offer resistance to the end, but this was forbidden to him by Governor Vaudreuil. Instead, he signed a declaration of surrender, with which New France was surrendered to the British invaders. However, Lévis was extremely dissatisfied with the terms of this surrender, because it did not recognize the traditionally granted war honors for a defeated opponent. The regimental flags of the French line troops were then burned by him so as not to let them fall into the hands of the victorious invaders.
Back in France
After the fall of New France, Lévis had to return to France on a British warship in October 1760. On his return he was promoted to lieutenant general the following year and then took part in several campaigns undertaken by French troops on German soil. After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763, he finally withdrew from active military service. In 1765 he was appointed Governor of Artois and in 1783 promoted to Marshal of France. A year later he was given the inheritable title of nobility a duke. Less than two years before the outbreak of the French Revolution , he died in Arras in 1787, where he was governor of Artois until the end. His widow and two of his three daughters later fell victim to the revolutionary reign of terror and were guillotined in 1794. His son Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis, on the other hand, managed to escape the revolutionary persecution by fleeing to England. After the death of Lévis he had succeeded him in the rank of duke and was to be elected to the learned society of the Académie française in 1816 .
rating
In view of the encrusted social situation of pre-revolutionary France, the life of François-Gaston de Lévis was a quite remarkable success story: After starting his professional career as an impoverished Gascon cadet from Languedoc , he finished it with the rank of marshal and with a duke title. With this he achieved a social advancement that was almost the utmost that someone like him could achieve in the social corset of the Ancien Régime . This was favored, among other things, by the fact that he had already received support from important personalities in the army and at court in the early stages of his career. In particular, Marshal de Mirepoix, who was related to Lévis and regarded by him as his foster father, played an important role.
Lévis lived in an era in which the patronage of influential patrons was of eminent importance, whereas the individual strengths and personal abilities of the individual played only a subordinate role. In addition, social life at that time was determined by a widespread scheming attitude. Given these general conditions, Lévis always avoided making enemies in the course of his career. With the same consistency, however, he also refused to play the role of a flatterer. Instead, he stayed away from all quarrels and quarrels, especially in his relations with Vaudreuil and Montcalm. It is remarkable that he was able to earn the respect of these two leaders who were so deeply at odds with one another, and it shows the deliberation with which Lévis, who was so cold-blooded in battle, acted in this regard. Undoubtedly, Lévis was an extraordinarily capable military commander, for which, among other things, the victories won under his leadership in the battles of Montmorency and Sainte-Foy stand. It is precisely in this context that the appreciation shown by James Murray , who was his military adversary in the battle for Québec in July 1759 and spring 1760 , is also striking .
literature
- Francis Parkman: Montcalm and Wolfe (Vol. 2 + 3) . Little, Brown & Co, Boston 1885; Reprint: 1969
- World history in pictures. Volume 16: The tensions in Europe / The penetration of the Europeans in Africa, Asia and America . Gondrom Verlag, Bayreuth 1981, ISBN 3-8112-0243-X .
- James Thomas Flexner: Lord of the Mohawks. 1981, ISBN 3-7653-0334-8 .
Web links
- François-Gaston de Lévis . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
- 1759 From the War Path to the Plains of Abraham (English)
- archive.org
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lévis, François-Gaston de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French general in the French and Indian War |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 20, 1719 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Château d' Ajac , Aude department, France |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 20, 1787 |
| Place of death | Arras , France |