Читать книгу General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution - Hal T. Shelton - Страница 10

If anything human could now reach his ear, nothing but the great concerns of virtue, liberty, truth, and justice would be tolerable to him; for to these was his life devoted from his early years.¹

Richard Montgomery was born on December 2, 1738, at his father’s country estate, near Swords in County Dublin, Ireland. . Thus, he joined a respectable family of Irish gentry as the son of Thomas Montgomery and Mary Franklin (Franklyn) Montgomery. His father, who had inherited a title of baronet, was a former captain in the army. He was serving as a member of the Irish Parliament for Lifford, in County Donegal, at the time of Richard’s birth.² Many of the traits that Richard Montgomery would exhibit later in life may be explained by his ancestry. Richard was directly descended from a family that had been prominent in Ireland and Scotland for many generations. Some sources even trace the early genealogy of the Montgomery family back to Normandy beyond A.D. 912.³ This lineage is replete with military, moral, and public-service references. Most of Richard’s forebears functioned in the armed forces and positions of civil duty. A few entered the private sector, seeking careers in commercial pursuits. The evidence also indicates that many of the personal conflicts experienced by this kinship involved ethical issues.

Richard’s father provides an excellent point of entrée into the Montgomery ancestry. Thomas Montgomery, a headstrong individual, defied his patriarchal father, Col. Alexander Montgomery (Montgomerie), in the matter of matrimony. Alexander opposed his son’s marriage to Mary Franklin, an English lady of fortune, but Thomas was unrelenting in his devotion to Mary. Alexander never forgave his son’s defiance of his wishes and designated Thomas’s eldest son, Alexander John, as the benefactor of his will.⁴

The union of Thomas and Mary Montgomery produced four children. Richard was the third son of the family, which also included a younger daughter. Richard’s oldest brother, Alexander John, served as a captain in the British 43d Regiment in America during the Seven Years’ War. Subsequent to his military duty, he was a member of the Irish Parliament for Donegal for thirty-two years. He never married, and he died at the age of seventy-eight on September 29, 1800.⁵ John Montgomery, the second son, was one of the exceptions to the Montgomery legacy of military and public service. He became a noted merchant in Portugal.⁶ Sarah Montgomery, the daughter, married Charles Ranelagh, an impoverished Irish viscount, and raised a large family.⁷

Richard Montgomery himself chose to trace his origin from Count de Montgomery (Gabriel de Lorges), a French nobleman of Scottish extraction (c. 1530-1574).⁸ Although Richard was not a direct descendant of the count, this selection is significant because it reveals what personal qualities Richard admired most in his ancestry. A biography of Count de Montgomery fairly bristles with military prowess and moral courage.

On June 28–30, 1559, King Henry II of France held a celebration in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter, Isabella, to King Philip II of Spain. The king had a penchant for sporting activities, so he ordered a tournament to be conducted throughout the three-day festival. On the last day of the games, Henry II personally entered into the jousting match. The queen, Catherine de’ Medici (Catherine de Medicis), feared for her husband’s safety and urged him to forego the dangerous pastime. However, chivalry dominated the attitudes of the gentry during this era, and Henry prided himself on such attributes. He enjoyed a reputation as an accomplished horseman and man-at-arms. Like other noblemen, Henry had learned martial skills at an early age as part of his preparation for manhood. During a jousting training session, his father, King Francis I, delivered such a blow to his face that it tore a large gash in the flesh.⁹

According to custom, jousters used wooden lances and attempted to strike their competitors in order to unhorse them or to break their lances. After demonstrating his skill in several tilts, the king wished to challenge another opponent. He summoned Montgomery, his captain of the Royal Scottish Guard, to run against him. Montgomery tried to decline the perilous honor, but the king insisted. Although Henry and Montgomery broke their lances during this run, the count caused his monarch to lose his stirrup, nearly unseating him. Embarrassed by his unsteady performance during the first match, the king wanted to run another bout against Montgomery. Disregarding the protests of those concerned over the king placing himself in unnecessary danger, Henry demanded a rematch.¹⁰

During this encounter, both jousters broke their lances deftly; but Montgomery, in his anxiety, failed to release his broken lance immediately after impact. The severed shaft remaining in Montgomery’s hand unintentionally struck and raised the king’s visor, allowing the splintered end to be driven through the monarch’s eye. Hastily summoned surgeons removed a four-inch-long wooden fragment and four smaller pieces from Henry’s head. At first, the doctors believed that he would only lose his eye. On the third day, he was conscious and asked for Montgomery. When told that the count had fled Paris, he said: “He must be brought back at all costs. What has he to fear? This accident happened not through his fault but by an unlucky chance.”¹¹

In spite of this momentary rally, the king’s condition continued to deteriorate. Blood poisoning set in and brain damage ensued. Medical treatment proved to be futile. He lingered for ten days before succumbing to the wound. Henry II died on July 10 at the age of forty. He had been the victim of a tragic accident—and apparently forgave Montgomery for his part in the mishap. However, Catherine, the royal court, and other horror-stricken spectators who had witnessed the disastrous event blamed the hapless Montgomery for the loss of their ruler.¹²

Because of his censure, Count Montgomery retired initially to Normandy, where he maintained several estates, and subsequently fled to England. Also during this period, he converted to Calvinist Protestantism. Returning to France in 1562, he distinguished himself as a leader of the Huguenots in the religious civil war against Charles IX, son and successor to Henry II. Montgomery served as one of several Huguenot generals who fought against the Catholics during the rebellion. The others included the Prince de Condé (Louis I de Bourbon) and Count Gaspard de Coligny.

Most of the Huguenot military leaders came from the lesser nobility of France. Because of their landlord social status, they were particularly vulnerable to the high inflation that occurred from time to time. This economic condition severely reduced the value of money while land rental rates remained fixed by governmental regulation. In addition, French law forbade the gentry from supplementing their income through commercial enterprises. On the other hand, social convention dictated that the nobility maintain a certain standard of living. The maintenance of their station required a large, continuous expenditure for the education of their children, accoutrements of rank, and other trappings befitting a member of the lavish social order. Appearances had to be upheld at all costs. Therefore, the effects of the economy weighed harshly on this segment of society. These circumstances and the fact that the peerage traditionally received martial-arts training understandably turned many in this class to military pursuits. For them, war was the only trade they knew or were allowed to practice.¹³

During the first half of the sixteenth century, France engaged in wars with Spain and the empire (Valois-Hapsburg Wars, 1495–1559). With the ensuing years of peace, many French noblemen-soldiers became unoccupied and restless. The social tensions that had built up in this privileged group help explain the nature of their participation in the French Wars of Religion (1560–1598). These men, who were accustomed to living by the sword, became the protectors of the repressed French Protestants during an intense period of religious reformation and confrontation. This is not to suggest that the Huguenot generals were military mercenaries, attempting to reap only personal gain and glory. All of them had an almost fanatical devotion to their faith and dedication to their cause. Rather, their background offers an insight into why this religious struggle assumed a particular form. By inclination, these leaders were men of action, not politicians or men of letters. Therefore, it was inevitable that this civil strife would be played out through military confrontation instead of using intellectual or diplomatic alternatives.

The death of Henry II left at the head of state Catherine de’ Medici as regent and queen mother of two young, sickly kings. Francis II, the first in succession, died on December 5, 1560, at the age of eighteen. Charles IX succeeded his brother when only ten years old. This period of uncertainty in royal power provided yet another catalyst for the Religious Wars. Initially, Catherine, acting as regent, attempted to reconcile the two religious factions; however, her actions proved to be ineffectual. France experienced a protracted cycle of pacification followed by violent outbreaks of armed conflict between the two sets of antagonists. Historians have differentiated up to eight separate wars during this turbulent period of nearly four decades of domestic strife. Met with this series of rebuffs, Catherine then exercised her matriarchal influence with Charles to align the monarchy with the Catholics and the established church. The conflict turned into a civil war, pitting the royalists and Catholics against the Protestants or Huguenots.¹⁴

Montgomery soon established himself as the most successful Huguenot military commander. Condé and Coligny suffered frequent defeat by the Catholics, and Condé lost his life after being captured in March 1569. Although Montgomery’s forces were usually outnumbered by the opposition, they raided extensively in western France. Montgomery had many narrow escapes as the Catholic army harried his troops, but he managed to elude the ponderous and disorganized adversary. Because of these victories, Montgomery increased the size of his force from the areas in which he campaigned. Many of his followers came from Normandy, where he was well known. He was also instrumental in causing mutiny in the ranks of the Scotch Royal Guard, thirty of whom deserted to their former commander. This necessitated a reorganization of the guard in which the monarchy replaced the rebellious Scotch troops with Swiss soldiers. The King’s Swiss Guard remained until the French Revolution.¹⁵

On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572, Catherine attempted to accomplish by assassination what the Catholics had failed to do by military action—the overthrow of the Huguenot movement. By this time, she was convinced that the Huguenots constituted a real threat to the throne and that their activities might result in foreign intervention. In what is commonly referred to as the St. Bartholomew Massacre, the monarchy and Catholic forces plotted the murder of all the principal Huguenot leaders in a mass killing.

Conciliation toward the Protestants in the previous year had allowed Coligny to return to court. He was the first victim slain in Paris. Montgomery, quartered across the Seine River in St. Germain, was also a primary target for assassination that day. However, by the time assassins reached his location outside of Paris, Montgomery had received warnings of the danger and managed to foil his attackers. He escaped to Normandy and thence to England. The selected massacre soon raged out of hand into a general slaughter, with mobs roaming throughout Paris streets killing suspected heretics. In the next several days the carnage spread from Paris to the provinces. Thousands of individuals lost their lives in this brutal event.¹⁶

Of the chief leaders of the Huguenot armies, only Montgomery survived. His dramatic avoidance of the St. Bartholomew Massacre frustrated the French monarchy’s plan to undermine the Huguenot movement. Therefore, Catherine and Charles were most anxious to apprehend Montgomery. However, Queen Elizabeth I of England maintained an active interest in Montgomery and his cause. Fancying herself as the upholder of Protestantism, she gave aid and encouragement to the Huguenots. She also forced mediation several times during the Religious Wars by threatening English intervention. Elizabeth had offered sanctuary and a sympathetic ear before to Montgomery. Thus, when Montgomery arrived safely in England, Elizabeth offered him refuge.

In its frantic attempt to use every means to dispatch Montgomery, the French monarchy disregarded Elizabeth’s previous compassion for the Huguenots and sought her cooperation. When Charles’s ambassador delivered a message to her requesting assistance in the capture of Montgomery, Queen Elizabeth employed subterfuge by citing an instance when King Henry II refused to surrender some English fugitives upon the request of Queen Mary. Queen Elizabeth responded thus: “I would answer your master as his father answered my sister, Queen Mary, when he said, ‘I will not consent to be the hangman of the Queen of England.’ So his Majesty, the King of France, must excuse me if I can no more act as executioner of those of my religion than King Henry would discharge a similar office in the case of those that were not of his religion.”¹⁷

Montgomery soon returned to France and continued the Huguenot crusade. He and his followers eventually mounted a stout resistance to the French crown. The Huguenots established control over the province of Normandy by holding the strategic towns of St. Lo and Domfront. At this time, Montgomery threatened to bring extensive French territory under the power of the Protestants. In 1574, Charles IX tried to negotiate an armistice with the count, promising him protection if he would lay down his arms. However, Montgomery replied that the memory of St. Bartholomew prevented him from doing so.¹⁸

Montgomery’s remarkable military career was destined to be brief. The royalists and Catholics finally organized a strong suppressive force and launched a sustained attack on the Huguenot stronghold of St. Lô. Since he was outnumbered and besieged, with little hope of success or escape, Montgomery’s situation became desperate. Although suffering tremendous losses, he evaded destruction. However, the loyalist forces overtook Montgomery a few days later at Domfront and forced him to surrender the remnants of his command. Montgomery’s apprehension occurred three days before King Charles IX finally succumbed to a long illness.¹⁹

The capture of Count Montgomery was particularly gratifying to Catherine de’ Medici, who had never forgiven the unfortunate knight for her husband’s death. Montgomery’s warring against her son who succeeded the late king further exasperated her feelings. Therefore, Catherine did not wait for her other son, Henry III, to assume the throne before venting her rage against Montgomery. Assuming the position of regent once again, she ordered an immediate trial in Paris. The court found Montgomery guilty of treason and sentenced him to death by decapitation.²⁰

On June 26, 1574, Gabriel Montgomery died, facing death as courageously as he had lived. Proud and defiant until the end, he maintained silence under torture when his captors tried to extract a confession. He also remained constant to the faith that he embraced after his initial flight to England. To a friar who attempted to convince him that he had been deceived by his conversion, he replied: “If I have been deceived, it was by members of your own order; for the first person that ever gave me a bible in French, and bade me to read it, was a Franciscan like yourself. And therein I learned the religion that I now hold, which is the only true religion. Having lived in it ever since, I wish, by the grace of God, to die in it today.”²¹

On the scaffold, Montgomery addressed the spectators, speaking movingly in support of his religious principles. He also requested “that they would tell his children, whom the judges had declared to be degraded to the rank of ‘roturiers,’ that, if they had not virtue of nobility enough to reassert their position, their father consented to the act.”²² Refusing a blindfold, he then offered his neck to the executioner’s sword. Gabriel Montgomery thus entered martyrdom. His military exploits and the manner in which he conducted himself during his execution served as inspiration to the remaining Huguenots. Instead of destroying the Huguenot sect as Catherine had expected, Montgomery’s death had just the opposite effect. It infused new life into the cause, which at that time was at its lowest ebb.

Gabriel Montgomery’s legacy of loyal devotion to heartfelt convictions apparently served as an incentive for his family to regain their noble status. By 1583, in Normandy, young Count Montgomery had succeeded to the rank of his father and taken up arms in the Protestant cause.²³ The wars continued until 1598. At that time, Henry of Navarre, who gained decisive military victories as a Protestant leader, brought political as well as military unity and peace to France by embracing the Catholic religion as King Henry IV.

Another more direct Montgomery descendant, Sir Hugh Montgomery, went to England with William III of Orange in 1689 and commanded a regiment during the wars with Ireland (1690–1691). William rewarded him with vast land grants in Ireland. Many of his relations migrated to live on the Montgomery landholdings in Ireland, and this period gave rise to the Irish branch of the Montgomery family.²⁴

Also during this era, the Montgomery kin devised the heraldic armorial insignia, which Richard Montgomery would later inherit. Some sources record that Gabriel Montgomery emblazoned on his shield a man impaled by a lance, in grim memory of the mortal wound that he delivered to Henry II. However, evidence indicates that this account was a fabrication, invented by the Catholics to rally loyalist hatred and opposition to Montgomery during the war. A reference to this incident was not included in the Montgomery coat of arms until the Irish Montgomerys redesigned it many years later, adding an arm clad in armor grasping a broken lance to the design. The designers also changed the motto inscribed below the shield at this time by substituting “Patriae Infelici Fidelis” (Loyalty but Misfortune in One’s Native Land) for the Scottish “Garde Bien” (Protect Well).²⁵

These past events and personalities, then, formed the lineage that Richard Montgomery inherited. His heritage helped to shape his value system and worldview throughout his life. Therefore, an understanding of the Montgomery ancestry facilitates perceptions of Richard’s later decisions and conduct.

With this warlike family tradition, it was natural for Richard to be disposed toward a military career. Befitting a son of landed gentry, he acquired a liberal education as a youth. After receiving his initial education at St. Andrews School, Richard enrolled in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1754. He attended two years of college when, upon the advice and urging of his father and oldest brother, he made a final decision in favor of joining the army. Thomas probably influenced his son toward military service because he wanted Richard to follow in his footsteps and those of his forefathers in maintaining the Montgomery military tradition. Alexander had already established himself as an army officer, having received an appointment sometime before. His father purchased an ensign’s commission for Richard, and he entered British military service on September 21, 1756, at the age of eighteen. He spent the next eight years of his early manhood in the 17th Regiment of Foot in the British army.²⁶

The 17th Regiment had a long and honorable history. In 1688, King James II hurriedly expanded his army to meet the threat of William III to his throne. He added four thousand Englishmen to the army lists, together with three thousand men from both Ireland and Scotland. Raising the new regiments, which included the 17th, brought the total army strength to forty thousand men. King James felt confident that he could defend his crown with such a force. However, political conspiracy, not force of arms, caused the overthrow of James. Most of his high-ranking officials deserted him, and he fled into exile without a major military confrontation. The 17th Regiment survived the “Glorious Revolution” and several army reorganizations that followed. It later distinguished itself during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), fighting under the Duke of Marlborough throughout wartorn Europe.²⁷

It is ironic that Richard Montgomery became a member of the same regiment that James II formed to oppose his ancestor, Sir Hugh Montgomhery, who was then in the service of William III. Nevertheless, the 17th Regiment was proud of its reputation as a time-honored Irish unit, loyal in its support to the British Empire. Richard must have shared this military tradition after joining the 17th as a young, inexperienced officer. The time of Richard’s induction into the army was the eve of a momentous world event that would provide the 17th another opportunity to bravely serve the king—the Seven Years’ War. It would also furnish Richard an opportunity to uphold the Montgomery family heritage and prove himself as a professional soldier.