‘The Greatest Of All Scoundrels’ — La Corne St. Luc

This St. Luc is a great Seigneur among the Canadians, and almost absolute with the Indians.
He has been our most bitter enemy. He is acknowleged to be the greatest of all scoundrels.

— Thomas Jefferson to John Page, October 31, 1775

British General John Burgoyne had a plan in 1777. He would drive an army from Canada down the Hudson River corridor — which had been a highway of wilderness warfare for a century — link up with an army under General Lord William Howe pushing up from New York, cut the colonies in two, isolate the recalcitrant New England colonies and bring the American rebellion against the Crown to an end.

It could have worked. Hell, it should have worked. But for a multitude of reasons, it didn’t work. Burgoyne’s campaign failed utterly; he was forced to surrender to American forces in October 1777. What went down in history as the Saratoga Campaign was a hinge point; France entered the war on the side of the Americans, and Great Britain would go on to lose her 13 North American colonies.

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That Burgoyne could lose would have seemed a ridiculous proposition in the summer of 1777. His army was a good one, comprised of well-trained British Regulars, highly motivated Loyalist militia, tough German mercenaries — and a cadre of fierce warriors from the St. Lawrence River country, and the tribes of the Great Lakes. Burgoyne needed these native auxiliaries — as scouts to guide his advance across rough wilderness terrain, as raiders to disrupt American pickets, and, not least, in order to paralyze the Americans with fear. The settlers of the region Burgoyne was entering had living and generational memory of savage wilderness warfare against these fierce tribesmen, and their presence was, indeed, chilling.

Burgoyne was ambivalent about his native auxiliaries. He recognized their usefulness in wilderness warfare, but the cruelty of their mode of war repulsed him. His attitude was self-contradictory. On one hand, we wanted the terror that the Indians could kindle in the hearts of the American Rebels. He exploited the reputation of his partisan warriors with a warning to the Rebels:

I have but to give stretch to the Indian Forces under my direction, and they amount to Thousands, to overtake the harden’d Enemies of Great Britain and America, (I consider them the same) wherever they may lurk. If notwithstanding these endeavours, and sincere inclinations to effect them, the phrenzy of hostility shou’d remain, I trust I shall stand acquitted in the Eyes of God & Men in denouncing and executing the vengeance of the state against the wilful outcasts.

On the other hand, he did not want these brutal forest fighters to actually do terrible things that would reflect badly upon his reputation. Like murdering civilians.

When the Western Indians arrived in his camp, he offered them a speech:

Persuaded that your Magnanimity of Character, joined to your principles of affection to the King, will give me fuller Control over your minds than the military rank with which I am invested, I enjoin your most serious attention to the rules which I hereby proclaim for your invariable observation during the campaign.

• I positively forbid bloodshed when you are not opposed in Arms.
• Aged men, women, children and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict.
• You shall receive compensation for the prisoners you take, but you shall be called to account for scalps.

In conformity and indulgence to your customs, which have affixed an idea of honor to such badges of victory, you shall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead when killed by your fire and in fair opposition’ but, on no account, or pretence, or subtlety, or prevarication, are they to be taken from the wounded, or even dying; and still less pardonable, if possible, will it be held, to kill men in that condition on purpose, and upon a supposition that this protection to the wounded would be thereby evaded.

Base lurking assassins, incendiaries, ravagers and plunderers of the country, to whatever army they belong, shall be treated with less reserve; but the latitude must be given by order, and I must be the Judge of the Occasion.

Neither General Burgoyne nor his staff could communicate effectively with or lead the Ottawa, Potawatomi and Chippewa warriors. He relied upon experienced interpreters and liaison officers — and almost all of them were French. These were men who had recruited, led, and fought alongside these warriors in the 1755-63 French & Indian War. Among them was the ace Frontier Partisan Charles Langlade. Another was La Corne St. Luc.

This remarkable man was 66 years old in 1777, a veteran partisan fighter in several wars, a successful entrepreneur in the fur trade, a chevalier, and a survivor of one of the worst shipwrecks in Canadian history. Yet, he is little remembered today. History is capricious.

In the first years of the American rebellion, the British hesitated to resort to “hard war,” hoping for reconciliation between Great Britain and America. St. Luc counseled immediate, harsh, and bloody action. He told New York’s Loyalist ex-governor William Tryon that the Crown’s best strategy was “to unleash the Indians against the wretched rebels” and drown the rebellion in blood.

St. Luc and Burgoyne were destined to collide.

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St. Luc was born in Canada in 1711 to a family of noble lineage. He served in all of the conflicts between New France and the British American colonies, distinguishing himself as a capable recruiting agent among the native peoples, and as a wilderness fighter. In the French & Indian War, he led a contingent of Great Lakes warriors during the Siege of Fort William Henry in 1757. After the British garrison’s surrender, those Indians attacked and slaughtered some 200 people in an incident that forms the centerpiece of Last of the Mohicans. Some Americans accused St. Luc of instigating the killings, which is not accurate. Then again, he may not have done much to restrain his partisans…

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes that:

In 1758 La Corne Saint-Luc distinguished himself in a type of military action that fitted in perfectly with the strategy of guerrilla warfare advocated by (New France’s governor) Vaudreuil. At the end of July he was able to take advantage of Montcalm’s victory at Carillon (Ticonderoga, N.Y.) to launch an attack with a detachment of 400 Canadians and Indians on an enemy convoy en route to Fort Lydius. Acting quickly for fear of a surprise counter-attack by the enemy, they took 64 prisoners and 80 scalps, killed many oxen, and destroyed the supplies. This trophy-taking in the Indian manner made many of La Corne Saint-Luc’s contemporaries, including the Americans, indignant. But in Governor Vaudreuil’s eyes the exploit merited the cross of Saint-Louis. Hence on 6 Nov. 1758, he made a note of commendation in the margin of his roster: “This captain has rendered very fine service at all times. He has fought in all the campaigns in this war and has always distinguished himself, particularly in this last campaign at Carillon, having been at the head of a detachment that laid an ambush on the road to Fort Lydius in which he completely vanquished an enemy convoy.” On 1 Jan. 1759 he was made a knight of Saint-Louis.

St. Luc came out of the war with a lasting — and dark — reputation, which Thomas Jefferson reflected upon in his letter to John Page:

This St. Luc is a great Seigneur among the Canadians, and almost absolute with the Indians. He has been our most bitter enemy. He is acknowleged to be the greatest of all scoundrels. To be assured of this I need only mention to you that he is the ruffian who when during the last war Fort William Henry was surrendered to the French and Indians on condition of saving the lives of the garrison, had every soul murdered in cold blood.

In between wilderness campaigns, St. Luc and his brother Louis established a thriving enterprise in the fur trade out of Montreal. Fur trade diplomacy and military diplomacy were so intertwined in this time and place that they were virtually the same thing. St. Luc was highly successful at both — so successful that it may be that St. Luc was the richest man in New France.

In 1761, after the fall of Montreal to the British, St. Luc and his brother, along with their sons, boarded a ship to sail into exile in France. St. Luc left his wife and daughters in Montreal, presumably believing that either his exile would be temporary, or that he could send for them to join him in France later.

The ship, the Auguste was wrecked of the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, when the gales of November came slashing. Of the 121 passengers and crew, only seven survived. Among them was La Corne de St. Luc — but he had lost his brother, his nephews, and his two sons. Two other sons had previously been lost at sea during the war, to an American privateer. Bereft and shattered, and in very real danger of dying from exposure and starvation, St. Luc led the survivors in an arduous trek back to Montreal.

The British conquerors relented in their earlier demands that the aristocracy of New France go into exile, and St. Luc and his remaining family managed to establish themselves among a new elite in British Canada. There are rumors that he encouraged native peoples to revolt against the British during Pontiac’s War in 1763, but whatever he may have done, he maintained his standing in society — and was tapped for his experience and expertise when Burgoyne needed to recruit native auxiliaries for his great campaign.

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The relationship between General Burgoyne and St. Luc began to unravel when warriors under St. Luc’s “command” murdered a young loyalist woman named Jane McCrae near Fort Edward in New York on July 26, 1777.

A detailed recounting of that incident may be found here:

The Killing Of Jane McCrea

Burgoyne was probably genuinely outraged and sickened by the brutal action of his Indian auxiliaries — and he saw immediately that the Americans were going to exploit the hell out of a ready-made propaganda opportunity. His immediate reaction was to demand that the perpetrator of the killing be turned over to the British military authority for execution, but St. Luc readily talked him out of that course. St. Luc tried to explain to Burgoyne that the Indians had not violated their own rules of engagement, and could not understand the General’s outrage at what, to them, was a small matter. If Burgoyne punished them, the Great Lakes Indians would desert him — and might well wreak havoc across the country on their return home.

Burgoyne acquiesced, but he tightened the rules of engagement, and his evident contempt created so much resentment among the Western Indians that they left anyway, in August. Burgoyne essentially lost his eyes and ears just as he was coming into contact with significant American forces. With lack of support from other British commanders, and severe supply problems, Burgoyne’s vaunted campaign was falling apart. Within a few weeks, he had surrendered at Saratoga.

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Burgoyne was called to account for his actions before Parliament (of which he was a member)  in 1778. In response to criticism coming out of the McCrea killing, Burgoyne emphasized his reluctance to use Indian auxiliaries and praised his own efforts to restrain them. In this, he attacked St. Luc, who had accused Burgoyne of grossly mishandling the campaign and the Indians in particular. Burgoyne accused St. Luc of encouraging the Indians to desert, and said that St. Luc was:

“…artful, ambitious, and a courtier, and, withal, owing him a grudge for controlling him in the use of the hatchet and the scalping-knife.”

St. Luc was having none of this, and he offered his former commander a public middle finger in the London newspapers:

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Burgoyne would survive the inquiry and remain in Parliament, though his military career was essentially over. St. Luc was finished in the field, too. When France entered the Revolutionary War in 1778, British Governor Haldimand in Canada decided that he couldn’t trust Frenchmen in positions of authority. St. Luc’s last public work was in the Legislative Council in Quebec, seeking to enshrine the civil and religious rights of Frenchmen as articulated in the Quebec Act of 1774.

He died in 1784, having lived a long life full of action, achievement, wealth and profound personal loss. While it is easy to understand why he had such a dark reputation among the Americans — he was an effective partisan leader among their most feared enemies — from his own perspective, La Corne St. Luc was a patriot who served his King well, be he French or British.

Though little-marked today, he deserves to stand in the first rank of the Frontier Partisans of the 18th Century.