This post is a part of the 2023 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which were edited and compiled by members of the CRE’s board alongside editors at Age of Revolutions.
By Thomas Lecaque
There are many starting points for a conversation about religious violence in the Seven Years’ War. A sermon by Theodorus Frielinghuysen II, the pastor of the Reformed Dutch Church in Albany, entitled “Wars and Rumors of Wars, Heavens Decree over the World. A Sermon Preached in the Camp of the New-England Forces. On Occasion of the Expedition to remove the Encroachments of the French, on his Majesty’s Dominions in North-America,” remains one of the clearest exemplars of the genre.[1] The sermon was printed in 1755 and distributed at the start of the Seven Years’ War in the British colonies, when things were going very badly for the British. He opened it with Matthew 24:6, from the “Little Apocalypse,” “And ye shall hear of Wars, and Rumors of Wars: See that ye be not troubled; for all these Things must come to pass, but the End is not yet.”[2] The sermon was an apocalyptic one, putting the Seven Years War into an apocalyptic context, exhorting the Protestant military forces to engage in combat against the French as servants to the Enemy, “to remove the Encroachments our antichristian Neighbours, who also are our great Enemies,”[3] and putting the war into a lineage of battles between Satan and the Archangel Michael, of Cain and Abel, of the armies of empire after empire, speaking the New England militia into Biblical history before going into a length list of the crimes of the French, with this cry:
By what we have already seen and felt of the Maltreatment and Oppression, the Violence and Cruelty of our Antichristian Neighbours, and their Barbarians, we may judge, what they would do, if we permit them to go on; and if we were unsuccessful in our present Expedition, for removing their Encroachments, boundless and uncontroulable would be their Insolence; let us pursue them, would they say, to the Ends of the Earth; at least, let us never stop until we have driven those Hugonots, those pestilent Hereticks, clear off from the Continent of America.[4]
The rhetoric of religious violence in this sermon is worth examining, but it already has been—we know that sacred violence was alive and well in the Protestant New World, that preachers called for holy war against their enemies, and that the wars between France and England, much like the wars between England and varied Native polities, were fertile ground for holy war rhetoric to sprout from. Christian Cuthbert’s edition of The Wartime Sermons of Jonathan Edwards for King George’s War, for example, or James Byrd’s Sacred Scripture, Sacred War for the American Revolution, immediately come to mind, and Susan Juster’s Sacred Violence in Early America is quite clear in its examination of religious ideology in the spectacular violence of colonial New England up to 1715.[5] Excellent English language work has also been done on the ideology of holy war in New Spain—Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s Puritan Conquistadors, for example, looks at the rhetoric of sacral violence among both Puritans in New England and Catholic missionaries and conquerors in New Spain, and Amy Remensnyder’s La Conquistadora explicitly traces Marian devotion and crusade rhetoric from the Reconquista into the conquest of the Americas by Spain.[6] All of this is to say that clearly religious warfare and rhetoric are alive and well in the New World.
There is less focus in in English-language historiography on the French side of these conflicts, with the notable exception of Bronwen McShea’s Apostles of Empire, chapter 5: “Crusading for Iroquois Country.”[7] The Seven Years’ War, on the English side, opened with apocalyptic rhetoric—the disastrous Braddock Expedition gives rise to ever more militant language in sermons responding to it, with William Vinal’s “A sermon on the accursed thing that hinders success and victory in war” saying, “Tell it not at Quebec, publish it not in the Streets of Paris, les the Daughters of France rejoice, and the Sons of Anti-Christ triumph.”[8] The language that came out of Quebec was also the language of holy war, but one that fits into a very traditional, pastoral, spiritual warfare tradition, hearkening back to the First Crusade chronicle by the Poitevin priest Peter Tudebode[9]—in a holy war, while the soldiers fight, the priests and the unarmed pray for their victory, for God’s aid, for the appearance of saints and angels to strengthen them in battle. In the Seven Years’ War, the Bishop of Quebec called for no less.
This makes perfect sense, because crusading was not just a historical tradition in the 18th century—it was an ongoing one. Crusading did not formally end until Napoleon Bonaparte ended it in 1798 with the occupation of Malta and the end of the military mission of the Knights of Saint John.[10] Formal crusades continued before that, with clear examples in the Great Turkish War (1683 to 1699) and the Seventh Ottoman-Venetian War (1714-1718).[11] Benjamin Franklin had already been born when the last official crusading battle occurred, in 1717 at Matapan. Crusading was alive and well in the lifetime of the participants in the Seven Years’ War in the Mediterranean, and crusading ideology had crossed the Atlantic into New France during the seventeenth century, as Robert Sauzet has shown.[12] None of these ideas were new in Quebec; all of them had deep roots and intellectual and religious lineage.
With all of that as preface to the larger project, let us dive into some specifics, looking at the documents from the Seven Years’ War from Henri-Marie Dubreil de Pontbriand, the Bishop of Quebec. In the late nineteenth century, Henri Tètu and the Abbé Charles-Octave Gagnon, librarian for the archepiscopal library of Quebec, edited the official documents of the bishops of Quebec in an eight-volume series entitled the Mandements, Lettres Pastorales et Circulaires des Évêques de Québec. The nineteen documents from Bishop Pontbriand, from 1755 to his death in 1760, showcase the way the Bishopric of Quebec dealt with the war—not only the reports the bishop sent out to priests across New France about the progress of the war, but the specific prayers, litanies, and religious activity he promoted and expected priests and monks across the region to engage in to support the war effort.[13] The clergy, within their own view, was not simply living adjacent to the war, but was engaging in it actively in their prayers and supplications.
Pontbriand led the bishopric of Quebec through two major wars, arriving in the bishopric in 1741 and immediately calling together the church to institute reforms, engage in a listening tour, and deal with a controversy over a profaned cross in Montreal and a famine. During King George’s War, he gave repeated instructions for prayers and celebrations for King Louis XV’s victories; pushed the regular celebration of feast days to remind the people that they had heavenly protectors for the colony, despite the calamities of years past (including the celebration of Notre Dame de la Victoire[14]); and rallied an argument for martyrdom in the war, writing:
Dying for one’s interests is an effect of nature that we see examples of in the most barbaric people; dying for the Fatherland is shared by all good citizens; dying for one’s King is the duty of all good subjects; but dying for the defense of one’s religion, that’s the effect of grace; it’s dying as a kind of martyr, and when we are motivated by this holy motive, it’s finding in death the principle of an eternal life.[15]
After the victory at Fontenoy, he ordered Te Deum’s to celebrate royal victories and processions of the statue of the Virgin Mary to obtain the blessing of God on the armies of the King;[16] and in 1749, he ordered prayers throughout the colony in support of the end of the war, at the request of the King.[17] So when we start seeing surviving documents in 1755 from the Bishop, there is already a rhetoric in place to discuss these wars, one he had used before in a war that overall went in France’s favor.
From the beginning the tone is different. All of Pontbriand’s letters and orders from King George’s War maintain an aura of aggressive positivity—the war is going well in Europe, regardless of how things are going in the colony, and all will be well because the King is triumphing. In his first missive from the Seven Years’ War, on July 12, 1755, despite opening by rejoicing in the arrival of a new general and French military forces to defend the diocese—something that had profound effects on New France, as Christian Ayne Crouch has shown in Nobility Lost—the tone was much more subdued.[18] He recounted the miseries they’d endured: their neighbors have raised great forces against them to seize their advance forts, they’ve taken prisoners against the laws of war, they’ve blockaded the river, a plague is running rampant in the colony, and a fire burned down a monastery—things are not, in fact, going well in Quebec, but he wanted the diocese to work on reminding the laity that things are looking up. His solution was a series of prayers—the Deus refugium added to every mass to thank God for the graces that they have been given; extra benedictions on Thursdays in the major churches; extra parish masses at seven a.m. during the summer and autumn for people who work in the countryside; and a call for alms to reestablish the hospital in Quebec to take care of people.
By February 1756, it was clear the war was not going to end quickly—he wrote in the next document, “The war, which you have supported thus far, our dearest brothers, with such courage, is going by all appearances to continue this year, and perhaps with more vivacity than ever”—and that the victories the French had in the borderlands were leading them to attack the Acadians, to burn their villages and terrorize the people: Le Grand Dérangement.[19] He discussed the promises made and broken to the Acadians, especially the promise of freedom of religion, which were at that same time being attacked. As he said to the priests, “you will thus fight in this year, not only for your belongings, but still to preserve these vast lands against the heresy and the monsters of iniquity that she births every moment,” a religious call to spiritual warfare while hoping for God to aide their general and army against their enemies.[20] By August, when things are going better, they celebrated Te Deum in all parishes in celebration of a season of victories, which he listed in his orders, claiming that the clear support of the Virgin and the Saintly Protectors had not only brought victories on the field of battle but people back into the churches.[21] Among other things he mentioned not only the glorious victory at the battle of Fort Oswego in August 1756, but referenced it as reminding him of the “complete victory won last year against the general Braddock,” and that all of these victories led him to ask: “What are, our most dear brothers, your feelings on this action so humiliating for the English, so glorious for our army, so useful for commerce, so advantageous for the colony, and I hesitate to say, so favorable for our Faith?”[22] The letter concluded with instructions, beginning with telling them to “never attribute to human forces our prosperity, but always recognize the benevolent hand of the Lord, that the most dazzling trophies of victory lay at the feet of our altars, and let us all says with a unanimous voice: our armies achieve all of their glory solely through God,” and reminded them that the general placed two flags in the cathedral in Quebec and thanked God for the protection given to him and his enterprises.[23] Because the Bishop wanted to continue pushing spiritual warfare to continue providing physical victories on the field of battle, he called for a general procession with exposed relics the following Sunday, after Vespers, from the cathedral to the church of the Ursulines; that a special Te Deum will be performed after the procession in the cathedral, that another set of Te Deums will be sung in all parish churches the Sunday after, and that they will continue all previous rounds of prayers, extra masses, and extra benedictions to support the war.[24] This continued into 1757—the victories at Forts Saint-Frederic and Carillon were also celebrated with orders for benedictions and Te Deum,[25] as was the victory at Minorca in the Mediterranean in a separate letter, calling for “pray for the prosperity of his weapons, it’s praying for your proper happiness, it’s praying for the tranquility and felicity of all of Europe.”[26] In August, the victory at Fort William Henry—the massacre is mentioned—is celebrated, but celebrated partially: the victory is great, but the war is long and terrible.[27] Specific Te Deums are called for in celebration for the capture of Fort William Henry, and all of the previous public prayers are extended, but the war is clearly wearing on the Bishop and the colony.[28]
This was the high point of the war for Quebec—1755 to 1757 is when the French are winning, and shortly thereafter, everything turned against them. In January 1758, Pontbriand issued a call of “Public Prayers for the Time of War” that focused on the terrible dangers the colony faced despite so many victories.[29] It is by far the text with the most Biblical quotations in it—Psalms, Proverbs, Romans, Hebrews, Jeremiah—and warned that these tribulations are designed to bring men back to God, but that the priesthood needed to pray and exhort the laity to come together in order to “employ the protection of the August Mary, protectress of this colony,” and those of their patron saints and guardian angels—once again, prayers, songs, processions with the statue of the Holy Virgin.[30] And it goes downhill from there. The next letter asked priests to cede part of their financial support to the king, “in hopes that we can put ourselves in a defensive position when it snows and maybe the troops can march in springtime, and for this they need supplies.”[31] He noted the problem of supplies in the colony in general. By February 1759, things are worse. In his letter to the clergy, he opened with, “On all sides, Our Dearest Brothers, the enemy makes enormous preparations, their forces at least six times superior to ours, and are already en route,” and that beccame part of the general problem—it’s not that the situation is solvable in material ways, it’s that the clergy were going to try and muster God’s aid, as it is what remained.[32] Unlike previous letters in times of victory, where Te Deums are being offered, in the procession the psalm Miserere mei Deus was to be sung, and the missal Deus refugium was added to the mass.[33]
The situation was worse by April, and the missive he sent out was consequently bleaker. The war was wrapping up and France was losing. He wrote, after listing the cataclysms they’ve faced, that: “Our Faith teaches us that a true and sincere conversion can stop the arm of vengeance of divine justice, and it has often done so. The evil is vast, it is real; but the remedy is between your hands: ‘Infidel Jerusalem, return to God,’ and God, following his promise, will be swayed.”[34] And the list of prayers, and processions carrying the Eucharist, the psalms and the orisons and masses, were ever greater, because it is what the Bishopric could offer. By June he was sending a missive about the fears of the imminent attack on the city, including forgiving violence done in defense of the fatherland, even for priests; baptize without water if they cannot get it, including adults if necessary; baptize English babies if they worry about their death, with OR without the consent of their parents; priests can give the mass in homes, just like missionaries in the wilderness, if needed; they can hide the sacraments if they need to; priests can hear the confessions of the enemy, they can promise to not act against the enemy while the enemy is in control, they can act in all politeness to the conquerors; and if in the conquest of Quebec there are too many bombs lobbed into the city, they can give the mass in whatever buildings they need to, and offer the Eucharist without ceremony.[35] And after the death of Montcalm, in October 1769, he issued a letter on the sad situation of the colony, while praying that “in his All Mighty Power he will find a thousand ways to reestablish this colony which is at its final moment of ruin.”[36] By this point Pontbriand had fled to Montreal and was offering final orders for Montreal and Trois-Rivieres and scattered parish churches.
The bishop did not live to see the final ruin. His last letter, in May 1760 from Montreal, opened by saying they had seen for over a year and a half that he was “attacked by a mortal illness,” and that he had been constantly certain that this month would be the last of his life.[37] But now, as his life ended, they would have to deal with a vacancy in the Bishopric, as he would not be replaced yet—Quebec being busy falling, and no replacement from the Vatican able to arrive. On June 8, 1760, a letter was sent out to all remaining clergy announcing the death of Pontbriand.[38] Pontbriand’s death and the death of New France went hand in hand—like a good crusade, there is no victory, only the triumph of death in service to the Lord.
This is the beginning of a larger project on the rhetoric of holy war in colonial North America, focused on the French and English colonies, that J Tomlin and I are embarking on. There are numerous sources for French religious rhetoric across the eighteenth century that remain to be tapped, in archives in the United States, Canada, and France. The documents in the Mandements are an important trove of official documentation, pastoral instruction, and letters sent out to the clergy throughout New France—and the way the bishop speaks about the progress of the war, what and for whom he calls for prayers, the way he addresses military victories and, crucially, military defeats, are important for how the senior administrative levels of the Catholic Church in New France react to the events of the war. But it’s important to take this out of just the context of the Seven Years’ War and the religious rhetoric that permeated the conflicts between France and England in North America in the seventeenth century. Crusading is alive and well—dying, perhaps, but not dead until it is and then immediately resurrected. The ideology of holy war permeates the fabric of the conflict, and is found throughout the ecclesiastical record—we just are used to thinking of holy war on the battlefield only, because those are the accounts of crusading we most enjoy telling. But the priests and monks and abbots and friars who follow the armies were part of it, and their prayers, their supplications to the Virgin and to saints, the processions and psalms and songs and performances to bring God onto the battlefield to support his chosen side, these are all part of crusading. It is so easy to think of holy war as a weird quirk of the Middle Ages, to accept the numerical listing of crusades as being the totality of their existence, and to assume that they were a long time ago—but Benjamin Franklin was alive when the Papacy organized their final Holy League, and the bishops and priests in New France during the Seven Years’ War lived in an era where crusading had not ended, and the members of the Knights of Malta who were also French naval officers and fought the British fleet off the coast of Thirteen Colonies two decades later were still crusading themselves. The limitations we as historians put on, the geographic and temporal markers of periodization, are limits that obfuscate how real the crusading drive remains in Catholic circles in the eighteenth century—and how far that same drive had penetrated Protestant consciousness and ideology to oppose them from across the Saint Lawrence valley. It was not a static thing—the Papacy was no longer summoning official crusades against “heretics,” the Protestants did not have an official institutional apparatus for formal holy war—but the cause, the desire to wage holy war against their religious enemies, including and even especially their sectarian foes across the Catholic-Protestant divide, remained rich and potent and omnipresent in western Christendom. The Seven Years’ War marks but one of the richest opportunities to study it in the long eighteenth century, and not the only one.
Thomas Lecaque is an Associate Professor of History at Grandview University. He has published extensively on the intersection of religion and violence.
Title Image: The Capture of Fort Oswego by J. Walker, 1877. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Endotes:
[1] Theodorus Frielinghuysen, Wars and rumors of wars, heavens decree over the world. A sermon, preached in the camp of the New-England forces. On occasion of the expedition to remove the encroachments of the French, on his Majesty’s dominions in North-America (New-York: Printed and sold by Hugh Gaine, at the Bible & Crown, in Queen-Street, 1755), http://name.umdl.umich.edu/n05845.0001.001 , Accessed 2-12-2023.
[2] Frielinghuysen, 3.
[3] Frielinghuysen, 5.
[4] Frielinghuysen, 33.
[5] Christian Cuthbert, The Wartime Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Collection (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022; James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and thE American Revolution (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2013); Susan Juster, Sacred Violence in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
[6] Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors (Redwood City, CA : Stanford UP, 2006) ; Amy Remensnyder, La Conquistadora : The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2014)
[7] Bronwen McShea, Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).
[8] William Vinal, A sermon on the accursed thing that hinders success and victory in war, occasioned by the defeat of the Hon. Edward Braddock, Esq; general of all the English forces in North-America, who was mortally wounded in an engagement with the French and Indians, near Fort Duquesne, and died of his wounds the third day after the battle; which was fought July 9. 1755. : Published at the request of the hearers. / By William Vinal, A.M. Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Rhode-Island. ; [Four lines of Scripture texts] (Newwport [R.I.]: Printed by James Franklin, at the printing-office at the town-school-house, 1755), http://name.umdl.umich.edu/n05980.0001.001 ; Accessed 2-13-2022.
[9] Petrus Tudebodus, Historia de Hierolymitano itinere, tr. John H. Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974)
[10] Thomas Lecaque, “The Last Crusade: Napoleon and the Knights Hospitaller,” Age of Revolutions (December 16, 2019), https://ageofrevolutions.com/2019/12/16/the-last-crusade-napoleon-and-the-knights-hospitaller/ ; Accessed 2-12-2023.
[11] Thomas Lecaque, “The Enlightenment Strikes Back: Holy War and the Absence of Religious Violence in Empire: Total War,” Age of Revolutions (February 21, 2022), https://ageofrevolutions.com/2022/02/21/the-enlightenment-strikes-back-holy-war-and-the-absence-of-religious-violence-in-empire-total-war/ ; Accessed 2-12-2023.
[12] Robert Sauzet, « Guerre sainte ou croisade en nouvelle France », Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines [En ligne], 124-1 | 2012, mis en ligne le 19 décembre 2012, consulté le 13 février 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mefrim/181 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrim.181
[13] Mandements, Lettres Pastorales et Circulaires des Évêques de Québec, eds H. Tètu and l’abbé C.-O. Gagnon (Québec : Imprimerie Générale A. Coté et Cie, 1888), Vol. 2, hereafter Mandements.
[14] Thomas Lecaque, “Our Lady of Victories: Religious Violence and Liturgical Revolution in New France,” Age of Revolutions (August 15, 2022), https://ageofrevolutions.com/2022/08/15/our-lady-of-victories-religious-violence-and-liturgical-revolution-in-new-france/ ; Accessed 2-12-2022.
[15] Mandements, 44; French text: « Mourir pour ses intérêts c’est un effet de la nature dont on voit des exemples chez les peuples les plus barbares ; mourir pour la patrie c’est le partage de tout bon citoyen ;
mourir pour son Roi c’est le devoir de tout bon sujet ; mais mourir pour la défense de sa religion, c’est l’effet de la grâce ; c’est mourir en quelque façon martyr, et quand on est animé de ce saint motif, c’est trouver dans la mort le principe d’une vie éternelle. » Translation mine.
[16] Mandements, 48-51
[17] Mandements, 64-65.
[18] Mandements, 103-105; Christian Ayne Crouch, Nobility Lost: French & Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians & the End of New France (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2014)
[19] Mandements, 105; French text: “La guerre, que vous avez soutenue jusqu’à présent, Nos Très
Chers Frères, avec tant de courage, va encore selon les apparences continuer pendant cette année, et peut-être avec plus de vivacité que jamais.” Translation mine.
[20] Mandements, 107; French text: “Vous allez donc combattre dans cette année, non-seulement pour
vos biens, mais encore pour préserver ces vastes contrées de l’hérésie et des monstres d’iniquité qu’elle enfante à chaque moment. » Translation mine.
[21] Mandements, 110-114.
[22] Mandements, 112; French text: “elle nous rappelle la victoire complète remportée l’année dernière contre le général Bradoh. » Translation mine ; Mandements, 112 ; French text : « Quels sont, Nos Très Chers Frères, vos sentiments sur cette action si humiliante pour l’Anglais, si glorieuse à notre armée, si utile au commerce, si avantageuse à la colonie, et j’ose le dire, si favorable à la Religion ? » Translation mine.
[23] Mandements, 113; French text: “N’attribuons jamais aux forces humaines nos prospérités, mais reconnaissons toujours la main bienfaisante du Seigneur ; que les trophées des victoires les plus éclatantes paraissent aux pieds de nos autels, et disons tous d’une voix unanime : au seul Dieu de nos armées appartient toute la gloire. » Translation mine.
[24] Mandements, 114.
[25] Mandements, 115-116.
[26] Mandements, 118; French text: “Prier pour la prospérité de ses armes, c’est prier pour votre propre
bonheur, c’est prier pour la tranquillité et félicité de toute l’Europe.” Translation mine.
[27] Mandements, 122-124.
[28] Mandements, 124.
[29] Mandements, 125-130.
[30] Mandements, 128; French text: “employons la protection de l’Auguste Marie, protectrice de cette colonie. » Translation mine.
[31] Mandements, 130; French text: “Il serait à souhaiter qu’on pût se mettre en défense à la fonte
des neiges et que les troupes pussent marcher au petit printemps, et pour cela il faut des vivres. » Translation mine.
[32] Mandements, 133; French text: “De tous côtés, Nos Très Chers Frères, l’ennemi fait des préparatifs immenses, ses forces au moins six fois supérieures aux nôtres, se mettent déjà en mouvement. » Translation mine.
[33] Mandements, 134.
[34] Mandements, 135-6; French text: “La Foi nous apprend qu’une vraie et sincère conversion peut arrêter le bras vengeur de la justice divine, et que souvent elle l’a en effet arrêté. Le mal est grand, il est vrai ; mais le remède est entre vos mains : « Infidèle Jérusalem, revenez à Dieu, » et Dieu, suivant sa promesse, se laissera fléchir. » Translation mine.
[35] Mandements, 137-140.
[36] Mandements, 142; French text: “et trouvera dans sa Toute-Puissance mille moyens de rétablir cette colonie qui touche au dernier moment de sa ruine. » Translation mine.
[37] Mandements, 145; French text: “Depuis plus d’un an et demi vous me voyez attaqué d’une
maladie mortelle, et moi-même je me persuadais que chaque mois serait la fin de ma carrière. » Translation mine.
[38] Mandements, 147-8.
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