General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution. Hal T. Shelton
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ships of the line raced to the mouth of Havana Harbor to bottle up the Spanish fleet. The city was strongly fortified and garrisoned. Occupation troops numbered seventeen thousand regulars and militiamen. In addition, nine thousand armed sailors and marines were stationed on the twelve warships in the harbor. The Spanish deliberately sank three of these ships when the British squadron arrived to block their entrance into the harbor. On June 7, the British army landed unopposed approximately seven miles from Havana.
Shortly thereafter, the army divided into five brigades. The 17th Regiment, including Montgomery’s company, would take part in the siege and capture of Moro Fort. This fortress was the key position of the extensive works that protected the city and was considered by the Spanish to be impregnable. On July 4, the British batteries opened fire with forty-seven guns that had been dragged across a rough, rocky shoreline. Battleships outside the harbor, with a total of 220 cannons, kept up a continuous bombardment. The Spanish answered with their own artillery, driving away the British ships. Nevertheless, the British land batteries eventually managed to silence all the Spanish guns but two. On July 30, Montgomery and his men, together with the other troops of the brigade, captured Moro Fort by storm. The British force could now bear down on the last defenses of the city. At this point, the Spanish governor-general saw that further resistance would be useless and surrendered. On August 13, 1762, the Cross of St. George flew over the Governor’s Palace —the British had seized Havana and Cuba.30
The successful struggle of more than two months against a superior force defending fortifications that they deemed invincible was a glorious campaign for the British army. The triumph, however, exacted a heavy toll. British troop casualties totaled 520 men killed or dead from wounds received in battle, including the 17th Regiment figures of one sergeant and five men killed, two officers and two men wounded. However, the appalling statistic was the multitude of British soldiers who perished from disease—forty-seven hundred, or almost half of the expedition. The 17th Regiment fared much better, which might be attributed to its leaders— only losing four sergeants and twenty-two men to sickness.31
The tropical Cuban climate in the middle of summer took a deadly toll on the unacclimated British troops. The expedition executed its campaign under a relentlessly burning sun when there had been no rain for fourteen days. A scarcity of water compounded the problem. Because there was no fresh water source in the area of operations, drinking water had to be brought from a great distance, resulting in a precarious supply for the troops. One participant described how “excessive thirst soon caused the tongue to swell, extend itself outside the lips, and become black as in a state of mortification; then the whole frame became prey to the most excruciating agonies, til death at length intervened, and gave the unhappy sufferer relief.”32
On August 20, 1762, Montgomery and his regiment left Cuba in three transports and arrived at New York four days later. However, the debilitating effects of the rigorous campaign lingered. A chaplain who served in the operation reflected that “perhaps those were happiest who died and left their bones around Havana, for those who returned home, took with them broken strength, and a languor which lasted to their life’s end.”33 A surgeon examined members of the regiment after they landed at New York and rendered a medical report to General Amherst: “I have visited the above regiments, and am sorry to inform you of the deplorable situation they are in, . . . with dangerous fevers and fluxes, many of the men are past recovery and the rest so weak, that I fear a long time will elapse before they are again fit for service, . . . nor are the officers in a better condition; several cannot recover, and the greater number of the remainder will, for a long time, be weakly, and unfit to undergo much fatigue.”34
The 17th Regiment and other units that had been involved in the West Indies campaign entered an extensive program of rehabilitation and reorganization while in New York. On February 10, 1763, Britain, France, and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Seven Years’ War. Britain had established its world supremacy with the territorial concessions that it won resulting from the conflict. Except for a few islands off Newfoundland and in the West Indies, France relinquished its New World empire by ceding Britain all of its lands east of the Mississippi, and transferring its claims west of that river and New Orleans to Spain. In return for Cuba, Spain gave Florida to Britain. Thus, Britain prevailed over its rivals for colonial power.
Months of grueling combat exacted a toll on Montgomery. Years later, Janet Montgomery recalled her husband telling her of the campaign that “the duty was so severe, and he complained that by the heat and severity he lost a fine head of hair.”35 Although his ordeal left him with no permanent health impairment, Montgomery’s outstanding service during the Seven Years’ War sapped much of his vigor. In 1764, his family became concerned about his weakened condition and requested the British government to grant him a leave to return home: “The Relations of Captain Richard Montgomery, of the 17th Regiment of Foot, . . . having represented to me, that the bad State of Health, to which he is reduced by Seven Years Service in America, makes it necessary for him to return to this Kingdom, where His private Affairs also require his Presence.”36 However, Montgomery felt that he could not curtail his duties with the regiment. Several months later, British Army Headquarters in North America replied to the ministry: “Captain Richard Montgomery’s Regiment Being ordered upon Service, he will decline accepting any permission, to absent himself from his Duty at present, but as soon as the Service, for which his Regiment is intended, is over he will have leave to return to England.”37
The service to which the dispatch referred involved hostilities with the Indians, known as Pontiac’s Rebellion. This Ottawa chief had been France’s staunchest ally during the French and Indian War. Angered by the French surrender, Pontiac organized a general uprising of eighteen Indian tribes against the British. In 1763, he denounced the Treaty of Paris and instigated attacks on British outposts throughout the northwestern frontier, overwhelming eight of twelve scattered forts and forcing the evacuation of two more. After an initial surprise assault failed, the British stronghold at Detroit continued as a prime target for subsequent attacks by Indians. On May 12, 1764, the military command placed the 17th Regiment into a newly formed expedition under Col. John Bradstreet with a mission of reinforcing the beleaguered Detroit garrison. After arriving there, Montgomery and his regiment were instrumental in preventing Indians from taking the important location. As a result, the rebellious tribes became discouraged and eventually forced Pontiac to sign a peace treaty in 1766.38 After the crisis at Detroit had passed, Montgomery finally took his leave to return home in 1765. Two years later in July 1777, the 17th Regiment concluded its North American tour of duty and redeployed back to England.
While in Britain, Montgomery gradually recovered his health. He also had time to step back and reflect on the larger meaning of the war. On the one hand, he was justly proud of his military accomplishments and advancement within his chosen field of endeavor. On the other, he encountered the disillusionment that many feel when weighing the consequences of a horrific conflict in its aftermath. After all, Montgomery had beheld at close range the carnage and ruin that empire-building engendered. Thus, he was left torn between these two powerful emotions.
A precipitous impediment to the rate of promotion within the officer corps added to Montgomery’s growing discontent. During wartime, military expansion and personnel casualties allowed rapid battlefield promotions for deserving soldiers. With the onset of peacetime and demobilization, advancement in the British army became bogged down in political and bureaucratic maneuvering. Patronage, once again, reigned over merit as a basis for military preferment. Montgomery had risen from ensign to captain in less than six years. Ten more years would pass while he languished at the rank of captain. Nearing twenty years of total time in service and lacking an influential benefactor, Montgomery considered his prospects for attaining a personally rewarding culmination to the brilliant earlier part of his career.
During the late 1760s, Montgomery became friends with such prominent Whigs as Isaac Barré, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox. These political opposition leaders were becoming progressively more outspoken in their criticism of the British ministry. Barré shared a similar experience with Montgomery. He had entered the British army as an ensign in 1746 and later served with great distinction in North America during the Seven Years’ War. Although he rose ultimately to the rank of lieutenant colonel and commanded a regiment,