|
will not allow the Chevalier de Levi to be quiet in his
cantonmcnts. I have an eye to his magazines. I have six thousand as brave
troops as ever existed. Business may and shall be done with them, that
those who have hitherto deprived me of my preferement may repine at it.
Your old acquaintance Saunders is much my friend. He is a worthy brave
fellow; and if it lys in your way, I wish you would wait upon him, and let
him know how much I think myself obliged to him. Make my compliments to
all my relations about you, and be assured that I am sincerely yours,"
JAMES MURRAY.
(The old orthography has been retained in both letters]
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Quebec, October 19th, 1760.
"My DEAR GEORGE,
Yours of the 12th July did
not come to hand till yesterday. Your son Patrick, I told you before, I
should take off your hands. The commission is not yet made out for him,
but it is settled he is to have it. It would now have been done, had I
known his christian name, when I was in Montreal.
* * * * *
You seem to be nettled at the silence of the
newswriters; but if you’ll coolly consider I am highly honored thereby.
Mr. Townshend, Monkton, &c., &c., &c., were in the right, perhaps, to hire
these miscreants to relate feates they never performed, and to ascribe to
themselves the actions of other men. I don’t want such false trappings; it
is the praise of my brother soldiers I am ambitious of, and I flatter
myself I have their esteem. I have the satisfaction to know that my
conduct has the approbation of his Majesty and his Ministers. I have
served my country with an honest, hearty zeal, and shall continue to exert
the poor faculties I have, in any station I may be placed in. A steady
adherance to these principals will succeed in the end; and get the better
of all sculkers, jack-daws, and gazateers. It will no doubt be known
hereafter to all the world, who opposed the attack of the lines at
Montmorency, and who in the beginning, and to the very last of the
campaign, urged the descent above the town at the very place where it was
made. And surely no body is ignorant of what the left wing of the army did
the day of the 13th of September ; it was not en potence: it broke
the enemy’s line, and pursued the fugitives to the gates, and would have
compleated their destruction, had it not been called off by superior
authority. It must be allow’d that to maintain the conquest in the
situation I was left in, was a much more arduous task than the acquisition
of it; that was the business of two or three hours, in which fortune was
most partial to us; the other was a series of toils, alarms, intrigues,
finesses, and, in short, of everything that is comprehended in war. My
journal in the hands of the Minister points out all at large. You shall
see it when we meet; and you will allow that Monkton and Townshend gave up
a field of glory when they abandon’d Quebec, which they can never recover,
were they to |
