British military engineer John Montrésor somehow found himself in the thick of things whenever history was made in 18th-century America.
On February 20, 1760, near the height of the French and Indian War, a band of British Rangers staggered out of the Maine wilderness and into the settlement of Topsham. The men had made a hellish trek by snowshoe from Quebec, battling bitter cold and Indians to bring dispatches to the commander of British troops in North America. Three weeks into the journey, the group’s leader, Lieutenant John Montrésor of the 48th Regiment of Foot, had written in his journal: “The Party Broiled their moccasins and snow shoe strings and ate alder berries, which purged us violently.”
Just 23, Montrésor had already served more than five years with the British Army in North America and endured more hardship than most soldiers would encounter in a career. After this march of misery, he served the Crown for another two decades and established a sterling reputation as an engineer, surveyor, and mapmaker.
For all his talents, however, there was nothing extraordinary about him except this: At many of the most pivotal moments in the British Empire’s rise and fall in America, he was there. Like an 18th-century version of the modern movie hero Forrest Gump, he seemed to pop up any time history was being made.
John Montrésor was born in 1736 to a family of ancient Norman stock with a record of military service stretching back hundreds of years to at least the First Crusade, in 1096. His father, Colonel James Montrésor, was a military engineer and the son of a British Army officer. James joined a British force that laid siege to and captured Gibraltar from the Spanish in 1727, then commanded the fort’s engineering corps for many years. John was born in Gibraltar and spent most of his childhood on the post, even serving as a quasi-intern with his father for four years before being commissioned as an ensign in the 48th Regiment of Foot.
In 1754, with the start of the French and Indian War, John and his father were dispatched to America to serve with the forces of Major General Edward Braddock. In one of the war’s earliest actions, in May 1755, Braddock’s army rolled ponderously through the wilderness of Virginia, hoping to take Fort Duquesne, which the French had established at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (present-day Pittsburgh). His ranks boasted officers who would become the most famous military men of the era, notably Tomas Gage, later commander of the British Army in North America, and Horatio Gates and Charles Lee, who both served as major generals in the Continental forces during the Revolutionary War. Braddock’s aide-de-camp was the young Colonel George Washington.
On July 9, 1755, days after being promoted to lieutenant, the 18-year-old Montrésor took part in what would be the first of his many woodland battles in North America. It was not a glorious start. At the Monongahela River east of Duquesne, Braddock’s column of 1,300 was attacked by a largely Indian force a third its size. Fighting from the deep cover of the forests, the enemy mauled the redcoats and gave Montrésor and others an early taste of Indian warfare. Nearly 500 were killed, including Braddock, and the Indians nailed scalps to the trees.
Montrésor and his father were seriously wounded in the battle. Soon after, they were sent to Albany and upstate New York, where they supervised fortifications work on the Hudson River and Lake George. John was soon back on campaign and fought in several key battles, including the British victory in the siege of Louisburg in 1758 and the capture of Quebec in 1759.
At Quebec, the young engineer served under and became close to Major General James Wolfe. Just before the battle, Montrésor sketched a portrait of Wolfe that may be the last likeness of the officer, who died heroically in the fight. This portrait is all but forgotten, however, overshadowed by the iconic painting The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West. [See “Heroes in Coats, Breeches, and Cock’d Hats,” Summer 2010.]
After Quebec, Montrésor served in the city under Wolfe’s successor, James Murray. It was Murray, whom Montrésor called “a madman,” who sent him on that winter march through Maine that led his men to broil moccasins. The following summer he led a party exploring the unmapped territory between Quebec and the Kennebec River in Maine. During the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold came upon the notes from this expedition and used them to chart a path through Maine to attack Quebec in 1776.
After the war with the French and Indians concluded, Montrésor continued to do great service for the Crown in North America. When Indians attacked Fort Detroit in 1763 during Pontiac’s Rebellion, he led the British service’s first unit of French Canadians and helped lift a long siege. He also tackled various surveying and mapping projects. In 1767, he created a map of New York that was hailed for its beauty and accuracy. He also settled a dispute between New York and New Jersey over the boundary between the two colonies.
Just a few years before the Revolution began, Montrésor improved the defenses around Boston—work that would prove critical in the fight with the rebel colonists. Tis duty was particularly trying, Montrésor noted in his journal, thanks to “the Ill disposition of the malecontents at Boston whereby every article becomes more Expensive and withall not the best of their Kind.” One of his tasks was reinforcing Castle Williams, a 17th-century fortification on an island in Boston Harbor. Ironically, when the British evacuated Boston in 1776, Montrésor was called upon to blow up the castle to keep it out of American hands.
The early days of the war put Montrésor once again in the heart of the action. When the first shots rang out in April 1775, he marched with Brigadier General Hugh Percy to relieve troops at Lexington and Concord. Upon Percy’s retreat to Boston, at the high point of the fighting, Montrésor and four others were sent to repair the bridge over the Charles River that the Americans had torn down, only to have the Americans destroy it again after they left. Montrésor also fought at the battles of Bunker Hill, Long Island, and Brandywine. In late 1775, George III appointed him “Chief Engineer of America,” a title he would enjoy for less than two years.
As chief engineer (though still only a captain) Montrésor supervised the construction of defenses around New York City, and was apparently confident enough in British victory to purchase what is today Randall’s Island in the East River, where he lived until 1777, when the Americans burned his home. The year before, Montrésor happened to be present as the captured American spy Nathan Hale was preparing for execution. The two spoke, and Hale’s dignity and grace impressed the British officer. After the hanging, Montrésor was sent to the American lines under a truce to relay the news. He apparently told Hale’s comrades of their friend’s poise on the gallows, and of his famous last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Montrésor’s last years in the army were difficult. In 24 years of service, he had fought bravely and been wounded six times, yet he had never been promoted beyond captain. Montrésor could not forgive what he considered a grievous slight; his efforts, he believed, were never truly recognized.
Several things suggest why Montrésor was passed over. The engineering branch of the British Army in the 18th century did not enjoy the same status accorded combat troops, and Montrésor never developed the connections and influence to advance his career. What’s more, his journal is filled with bitterness and derisive remarks about his superiors, suggesting the engineer may have been an abrasive and difficult subordinate whom most commanders would have found hard to promote.
In 1778, at 42, he returned to England, where he managed to purchase his coveted commission as colonel just before he retired. This may have granted him some peace, but nettlesome questions soon arose about how his department handled substantial amounts of money, and the government seized and sold his estate.
Montrésor died in 1799 in prison, probably while serving time for debt. Though he had played a role in many of Britain’s most critical moments of the 18th century, he was a resentful and broken man largely forgotten by the nation he had served for a quarter century.
James L. Nelson is the author of With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Beginning of the American Revolution.
Originally published in the January 2014 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here.