Edward Cornwallis

War of the Austrian Succession

Cornwallis participated in the Battle of Fontenoy during the War of the Austrian Succession. He fought under Colonel Craig, who was killed in action. Cornwallis took over command of the regiment and organised a retreat. Cornwallis's regiment lost eight officers and 385 men. While the retreat was respected by the military, the British public mocked Cornwallis and the other leaders.^[5]

Cornwallis played an important role in suppressing the Jacobite rising of 1745.^[3] He fought for the victorious, government soldiers at the Battle of Culloden and then led a regiment of 320 men north for the Pacification of the Scottish Highlands. The Duke of Cumberland ordered him to "plunder, burn and destroy through all the west part of Invernesshire called Lochaber." Cumberland added: "You have positive orders to bring no more prisoners to the camp."^[6] Cumberland's' campaign was later described by one historian as one of unrestrained violence.^[7] Cornwallis ordered his men to chase off livestock, destroy crops and food stores.^[8] Against Cornwallis' orders, there was an incident in which some of soldiers raped and murdered non-combatants to intimidate Jacobites from further rebellion.^[9]

In 1747 he was made a Groom of the Bedchamber serving in the households of both George II and George III until 1764.

Founding of Halifax

Cornwallis built Governor's House (1749). (Located on the site of Province House, which still is furnished with his Nova Scotia Council table)

The British Government appointed Cornwallis as Governor of Nova Scotia with the task of establishing a new British settlement to counter France's Fortress Louisbourg. He sailed from England aboard HMS Sphinx of 14 May 1749, followed by a settlement expedition of 15 vessels and about 2500 settlers. Cornwallis arrived at Chebucto Harbour on 21 June 1749, followed by the rest of the fleet five days later. There was only one death during the passage due to careful preparations, good ventilation and good luck, a remarkable feat when transatlantic expeditions regularly lost large numbers to disease.^[10]

Cornwallis was immediately faced with a difficult decision: where to site the town. Settlement organizers in England had recommended Point Pleasant due to its close access to the ocean and ease of defence. His naval advisers opposed the Point Pleasant site due to its lack of shelter and shallows which would not allow ocean-going ships to dock. They wanted the town located at the head of Bedford Basin, a sheltered location with deep water. Others favoured Dartmouth. Cornwallis made the decision to land the settlers and build the town at the site of present-day Downtown Halifax halfway up the harbour with deep water, protected by a defensible hill (later known as Citadel Hill). By 24 July, the plans of the town had been drawn up and on 20 August lots were drawn to award settlers their town plots in a settlement that was to be named "Halifax" after Lord Halifax the President of the Board of Trade and Plantations who had drawn up the expedition plans for the British Government.^[11]

Relations with the Wabanaki Confederacy

Edward Cornwallis by Sir George Chalmers (1755)

One of Cornwallis' first priorities was to make peace with the Wabanaki Confederacy, which included the Mi'kmaq. (The Confederacy had been aligned with New France through four wars starting with King William's War.) A group of Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and single band of Mi'kmaq met with Cornwallis in the Summer of 1749. They agreed with the British to end fighting and renewed an earlier 1725 treaty drafted in Boston, redrafted as the Treaty of 1749.^[12]

Cornwallis' efforts to have other Mi'kmaq tribes sign treaties were rejected. Most Mi'kmaq leaders in Nova Scotia regarded the unilateral establishment of Halifax as a violation of the 1725 treaty with the Mi'kmaq people, signed after Father Rale's War.^[13]

Mi'kmaq leaders met at St. Peters in Cape Breton in September 1749 to respond to British moves. They composed a letter to Cornwallis making it clear that, while they tolerated the small garrison at Annapolis Royal, they completely opposed settlement at Halifax: "The place where you are, where you are building dwellings, where you are now building a fort, where you want, as it were, to enthrone yourself, this land of which you want to make yourself absolute master, this land belongs to me". Thus Mi'kmaq leaders regarded the Halifax settlement as "a great theft that you have perpetrated against me."^[14]

A wave of Mi'kmaq attacks began immediately afterwards. At Chignecto Bay, Mi'kmaq fighters attacked two British ships while two others were seized at Canso. At Halifax, Mi'kmaq attacks began on settlers and soldiers outside the fortified township, beginning with the first of several raids on the longhouse lumbering settlement at Dartmouth across the harbour. Five were killed in the initial attack and one escapee came to bring the news to Cornwallis. His Council met and while they urged either negotiation or a formal declaration of war, Cornwallis took the position that there was no sovereignty to negotiate with or declare war on and that the Mi'kmaq were British subjects and therefore should be considered "rebels."

This stage of the long-running Anglo-Mi'kmaq conflict is known by some historians as Father Le Loutre's War.

Father Le Loutre's War

The table first used by Edward Cornwallis and the Nova Scotia Council (1749), The Red Chamber of Province House

When Cornwallis arrived in Halifax, there was a long history of frontier warfare in Acadia and Nova Scotia between the British and the Wabanaki Confederacy (which included the Mi'kmaq). The Mi'kmaq sought to protect their land by killing British civilians along the New England/Acadia border in present-day Maine (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745, 1746, 1747).^[15][13][16] Despite the end of King George's War by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, there was renewed fighting in Acadia during Cornwallis' governorship, which was called Father Le Loutre's War.

Cornwallis sought to project British military power by establishing forts in the largest Acadian communities, at Pisiguit (Windsor) (Fort Edward), Grand Pré (Fort Vieux Logis), and Chignecto (Fort Lawrence). The fighting started when Acadians and Mi'kmaq responded by attacking the British at Chignecto, Grand Pré, Dartmouth, Canso, and Halifax. The French erected forts at present day Saint John, Chignecto (Fort Beauséjour), and Port Elgin, New Brunswick. Cornwallis's forces attacked the Mi'kmaq and Acadians at Mirligueche (later known as Lunenburg), Chignecto, and St. Croix.

British governors had often issued proclamations against the Mi'kmaq for their raids.^[17] After the Raid on Dartmouth, Cornwallis issued a proclamation to separate the two populations, by banning the Mi'kmaq from peninsular Nova Scotia. "Cornwallis proposed "to root [the Micmacs] out entirely," but the board warned him that such a course might imperil neighbouring British colonies by producing "a dangerous spirit of resentment" among other tribe."^[18]

In New England, the British paid their Rangers a bounty for Mi'kmaq prisoners or scalps, and the French paid the Wabanaki for British prisoners and scalps.^{[Note 1]} Cornwallis followed New England's example in his proclamation, in which he created a proclamation to harass - "annoy, distress, take or scalp" - the Mi'kmaq to remove them the peninsular Nova Scotia. Within this proclamation he offered a bounty for prisoners or the scalps of Mi'kmaw fighters.^[20][21] He later issued a bounty in March 1750 for Mi'kmaw women and children if they were taken prisoners. The bounties were not effective. Cornwallis increased the bounty for Mi'kmaw fighters dramatically in March 1751, but this increase brought in only one scalp in the next four months.^[22]

Fort Edward, named after Edward Cornwallis

In May 1751, the Mi'kmaw mounted their largest attack on British settlers with the Raid on Dartmouth. With this raid, the Mi'kmaq had stopped British expansion and therefore the Mi'kmaw stopped attacking. Cornwallis interpreted the cessation of attacks as the Mi'kmaq wanting peace. Indeed, Cornwallis laid the foundation for and was at the signing of the Treaty of 1752 with Major Cope. Cornwallis attended the meeting at Cope's request. Having only committed to being Governor for two years, Cornwallis eventually resigned his commission and left the colony in October 1752.^[23][24] The treaty was ultimately rejected by most of the other Mi'kmaq leaders. Cope burned the treaty six months after he signed it.^[25]

Cornwallis left Nova Scotia in 1752, three years before Father Le Loutre's War ended in 1755, and was appointed Colonel of the 24th Regiment of Foot.

Seven Years' War

Edward Cornwallis, etching by John Giles Eccardt after portrait by Joshua Reynolds

In November 1756 Cornwallis was one of three colonels who were ordered to proceed to Gibraltar and from there embark for Menorca, which was then under siege from the French.^[3] Admiral John Byng called a council of war, which involved Cornwallis, and advised the return of the fleet to Gibraltar leaving the garrison at Menorca to its fate.^[3] Byng, Cornwallis and the other officers were arrested when they returned to England. A large, unruly mob attacked the officers as they left their ships in Portsmouth and later burned effigies of Cornwallis and the other officers.^[26]

The officers faced court martial on "suspicion of disobedience of orders and neglect of duty."^[27] Byng was found guilty and executed. Cornwallis testified that he had not disobeyed orders, but that it was "impracticable" to land at Menorca due to stiff French defences. Further, he said he was following Byng's command. "I looked upon myself as under the command of the admiral and should have thought it my duty to have obeyed him", he testified.^[27] Cornwallis was judged to have been a passenger under the control of Byng and was thus exonerated.

Cornwallis was also one of the senior officers in the September 1757 Raid on Rochefort which saw a failed amphibious descent on the French coastline.^[3] The vast force massed on the Isle of Wight before sailing for Rochefort. The fleet stopped at Île D'Aix and examined the French defences. General Sir John Mordaunt, head of the land forces, decided the defences were too strong to attack. He called a council of war. Cornwallis voted to retreat, while Admiral Edward Hawke, head of the naval forces, and James Wolfe, quartermaster general, voted to attack. Mordaunt and Cornwallis carried the day and the mission was abandoned.^[28]

Mordaunt was arrested and faced court martial. Cornwallis testified that an attempted landing at Rochefort would have been "dangerous, almost impracticable and madness."^[29] James Wolfe wrote to his father in November 1757 and said Cornwallis "...has more zeal, more merit, and more integrity than one commonly meets with among men….Cornwallis is a man of approved courage and fidelity."

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