1759 Victory Of Wolfe At Quebec
by A. G. Bradley
Part I
With the opening of the Seven Years' War the two races,
French and English, once more began to contend for the prize of
empire in the New World. For a while the advantage in the
struggle was on the side of France, though the preponderance of
population was vastly on the side of the English colonies. Louis
XV, however, had one general in Canada worthy of the gallant
race from which he had sprung, and who strenuously endeavored to
uphold the fortunes of his country. This was the Marquis de
Montcalm, a cultured and far-seeing French nobleman, whose
ability and enthusiasm in the profession of arms had procured
for him the chief military command in Canada, and who was now
seeking to expel the English from the colonial possessions of
France on the Continent.
But, unfortunately for his country, Montcalm was
ill-supported by Old France, and his difficulties were increased
by the maladministration of affairs in the colony. Despite these
drawbacks, he was for some years the means of protracting the
gallant struggle in America and of bringing many disasters on
the English arms.
Concentrating his forces in the neighborhood of Lake
Champlain, he attacked Fort William Henry, on Lake George, and
with a body of Indian auxiliaries from the Ottawa forced the
English to capitulate. The victory was marred by horrible Indian
atrocities on the English prisoners of war, which Montcalm was
unable to prevent. During the year 1757 Montcalm acted solely on
the defensive, while the English, having incompetent generals,
accomplished little and failed in an attempt to wrest Louisburg
from the French. The following year, however, William Pitt, "the
Great English Commoner," was called to the councils of his
nation, and infused new vigor into the war which had now been
formally declared between the two countries. Pitt, aiming at the
extinction of French power in America, fitted out a fleet of one
hundred fifty sail, under Admiral Boscawen, with a land force of
some fourteen thousand men, under General Amherst and
Brigadier-General James Wolfe, and despatched both to Canada.
The first operation was the siege of Louisburg, which
surrendered with about five thousand prisoners, and in the
capture of which young Wolfe greatly distinguished himself.
Later in the year the French were compelled to abandon Fort
Duquesne, in the Ohio Valley, which the English now named
Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac
(Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake
Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these
losses was disheartening to the French, though before the
season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under
General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake
Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759
opened, the English were ready to resume operations with spirit
and effect. Amherst's army advanced upon Crown Point and
Ticonderoga, from which the French retired, and Sir William
Johnson captured Niagara and drove the French from the Lakes.
Wolfe, now general of the forces of the St. Lawrence, sailed in
June with his army from Louisburg to Quebec. The story of this
eventful expedition and its result here given is by the able pen
of the historian A. G. Bradley.
When the flag of Britain supplanted the emblem of France on
the ramparts of Quebec the city was held by an English garrison
under General Murray, and in the spring of 1760 it narrowly
escaped recapture by De Levis, at the head of seven thousand
men, who had come from Montreal to attack it. The timely arrival
of a British fleet saved the now British stronghold, while
Montreal was in turn invested, and that post and all Canada
surrendered to the British Crown. Three years later the Peace of
Paris confirmed the cession of the country to Britain, and
closed the dominion of France in Canada.
England rang with the triumphs of her ally, Frederick of
Prussia, and, by a perversion peculiarly British, the scoffing
freethinker became the "Protestant hero" in both church and
taproom. Pitt was omnipotent in Parliament; only a single
insignificant member ever ventured to oppose him. "Our unanimity
is prodigious," wrote Walpole. "You would as soon hear a 'No'
from an old-maid as from the House of Commons." New-castle was
supremely happy among jobbers and cringing place-hunters under
the full understanding that neither he nor his kind trespassed
within the sphere of foreign politics. The estimates had
exceeded all former limits, and reached for those days the
enormous sum of twelve and a half millions. The struggle with
France was vigorously waged, too, upon the ocean, warships,
privateers, and merchantmen grappling to the death with one
another in many a distant sea, while the main fleets of the
enemy were for the most part blockaded in their ports by
vigilant British armaments. Everywhere were exhilaration and a
superb feeling of confidence, engendered by incipient successes
and by the consciousness that the nation was united in purpose
and that the leaders of its enterprises were not chosen because
they were "rich in votes or were related to a duke."
James Wolfe had certainly neither of these qualifications,
and he it was whom Pitt designed to act the leading part in the
coming year, "a greater part," he modestly wrote after receiving
his appointment, "than I wished or desired. The backwardness of
some of the older officers has in some measure forced the
Government to come down so low. I shall do my best and leave the
rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most
commanding abilities."
Pitt's plan for the coming season in America was to strike
two great blows at Canada, and a lesser one, which, if
successful, would involve the conquest of that country. Wolfe,
aided by a fleet, was to attack Quebec; Amherst with another
force was to push through by the Lake Champlain route and unite
with him if possible. A further expedition was to be sent
against Niagara under Prideaux; but for the present we are
concerned only with the first and by far the most memorable of
the three.
Wolfe at this time was colonel of the Sixty-seventh regiment.
He was to have local rank only of major-general while in
America, since more substantial elevation would, in the eyes of
Newcastle and his friends, have been almost an outrage on the
British Constitution as by them interpreted. Pitt and his young
officers, however, were well content to waive such trifles for
the present, and concede so much of consolation to the long list
of rejected incapables, in return for such honor and glory as
might perchance be theirs.
The land force was to consist of twelve thousand men, a few
of whom were to sail from England, but the bulk were to be drawn
from the American and West Indian garrisons. The latter,
however, were counter-ordered; the former proved to be below the
estimated strength, and the actual number that gathered in
Louisburg, the point of rendezvous, was only about eight
thousand five hundred. The command of the fleet was given to
Admiral Saunders, and this appointment demanded great
discretion, as the sailor in this instance had not only to be
efficient on his own element, but to be a man of tact, and one
who at the same time would put patriotism above professional
jealousy, and could be trusted to work heartily with the land
forces.
It was late in February when Saunders' fleet, convoying
Wolfe, his stores, and a few troops, sailed from Spithead. The
winds being adverse and the seas running high, May had opened
before the wild coast of Nova Scotia was dimly seen through the
whirling wreaths of fog. It was a late season, and Louisburg
harbor was still choked with ice, so that the fleet had to make
southward for Halifax at the cost of much of that time which
three years' experience had at length taught the British was so
precious in all North American enterprises. At Halifax Wolfe
found the troops from the American garrisons awaiting him. Among
them was the Forty-third regiment, with the gallant Major Knox,
our invaluable diarist, filled with joy at the prospect of
active service after twenty months' confinement in a backwoods
fort, and ready with his sword as happily for us he was with his
pen. In a fortnight Louisburg was open, and both fleet and
transports were grinding amid the still drifting ice in its
harbor. Here again the army was landed, and its numbers
completed from the Louisburg garrison.
There was naturally much to be done with an army brought
together from so many various quarters. The force, too, proved,
as I have said, far short of the estimate, being considerably
under nine thousand men; but, on the other hand, these were all
good troops and mostly veterans. Though the benefits of Bath
waters had been more than neutralized by nearly three months of
buffeting on the element he so loathed, Wolfe spared himself no
effort. He was not only a fighting, but to the highest degree an
organizing general. Every sickly and unlikely man, small as was
his force, was weeded out. Every commissariat detail down to the
last gaiter-button was carefully scrutinized. Seldom had England
sent out a body of men so perfect in discipline, spirit, and
material of war, and assuredly none so well commanded since the
days of Marlborough. It was well it was so, seeing that they
were destined to attack one of the strongest posts in the world,
defended by an army nearly twice as numerous as themselves, and
fighting, moreover, in defense of its home and country and, as
it fully believed, of its religion. The young general was
thoroughly alive to the numerical weakness of his force, but
that he rejoiced in its efficiency is evident from his letters,
and he was hard to please. "If valor can make amends for want of
numbers," he wrote to Pitt, "we shall succeed."
Admiral Durell, with ten ships, had been sent forward early
in May to stop French supply- or war-ships from ascending the
St. Lawrence when navigation opened. It was June 1st when Wolfe
and Saunders with the main army followed him, owing to fog and
ice and contrary winds, in somewhat straggling fashion. The
bands played the time-honored air of The Girl I Left Behind Me,
and the men cheered lustily as the ships cleared the bar, while
at the mess-tables, says Knox, there was only one toast among
the officers - "British colors on every French fort, post, and
garrison in America." With Saunders went twenty-two ships of the
line - five frigates and seventeen sloops-of-war, besides the
transports. All went smoothly till the 20th, when, the wind
dropping, they were caught in the cross-currents caused by the
outpouring waters of the Saguenay, which, draining a vast
mountain wilderness to the northward, would be accounted a
mighty river if it were not for the still mightier one that
absorbs it. Here the ships ran some risk of fouling, but escaped
any serious damage, and in three days were at the Ile aux
Coudres, where the real dangers of the navigation began. It must
be remembered that such a venture was unprecedented, and
regarded hitherto as an impossibility for large ships without
local pilots. The very presence of the first made the second
possible, for some of the vessels approaching the shore ran up
French flags, whereupon numbers of the country people, in
response to an invitation, came on board, little guessing the
visitors could be their enemies.
Pilots were by this ruse secured, and their services
impressed under pain of death. Knox, who understood French,
tells us that the poor unwilling pilot who took his ship up the
tortuous channel made use of the most frightful imprecations,
swearing that most of the fleet and the whole army would find
their graves in Canada. An old British tar, on the other hand,
master of a transport and possessed of an immense scorn for
foreigners, would not allow a French pilot to interfere, and
insisted, in the teeth of all remonstrance, on navigating his
own ship. "D - n me," he roared, "I'll convince you that an
Englishman shall go where a Frenchman daren't show his nose,"
and he took it through in safety. "The enemy," wrote Vaudreuil
soon after this to his Government, "have passed sixty
ships-of-war where we dare not risk a vessel of a hundred tons
by night or day." The British navy has not been sufficiently
remembered in the story of Quebec.
Let us now turn for a moment to Montcalm and see what he has
been doing all this time to prepare for the attack. It was an
accepted axiom in Canada that no armament strong enough to
seriously threaten Quebec could navigate the St. Lawrence. In
the face of expected invasion it was the Lake George and
Champlain route that mostly filled the public mind.
Bougainville, however, had returned from France early in May
with the startling news that a large expedition destined for
Quebec was already on the sea. A former opinion of this able
officer's declared that three or four thousand men could hold
the city against all comers. There was now four times that
strength waiting for Wolfe, while his own, so far as numbers
went, we know already. Eighteen transport ships, carrying
supplies and some slight reenforcements, had slipped past the
English cruisers in the fogs, and brought some comfort to
Montcalm. The question now was how best to defend Quebec, as
well as make good the two land approaches at Ticonderoga and
Lake Ontario respectively.
For the defence of the city, when every able-bodied
militiaman had been called out, nearly sixteen thousand troops
of all arms would be available. About the disposition of these
and the plan of defence there was much discussion. Montcalm
himself was for a long time undecided. The alternative plans do
not concern us here; the one finally adopted is alone to the
point. Everyone knows that the ancient capital of Canada is one
of the most proudly placed among the cities of the earth. But it
may be well to remind those who have not seen it, that it
occupies the point of a lofty ridge, forming the apex of the
angle made by the confluence of the St. Charles River and the
St. Lawrence. Westward from the city this ridge falls so nearly
sheer into the St. Lawrence for several miles that, watched by a
mere handful of men, it was impregnable. Moreover, the river
suddenly narrows to a breadth of three-quarters of a mile
opposite the town, whose batteries were regarded as being fatal
to any attempt of an enemy to run past them. On the other side
of the town the St. Charles River, coming in from the northwest
immediately below its walls, formed a secure protection.
Montcalm, however, decided to leave only a small garrison in
the city itself and go outside it for his main defence. Now,
from the eastern bank of the mouth of the St. Charles, just
below the city, there extends in an almost straight line along
the northern shore of the St. Lawrence a continuous ridge, the
brink, in fact, of a plateau, at no point far removed from the
water's edge. Six miles away this abruptly terminates in the
gorge of the Montmorency River, which, rushing tumultuously
toward the St. Lawrence, makes that final plunge on to its shore
level which is one of the most beautiful objects in a landscape
teeming with natural and human interest. Along the crown of this
six-mile ridge, known in history as "the Beauport lines,"
Montcalm decided to make his stand. So, throughout the long days
of May and June the French devoted themselves to rendering
impregnable from the front a position singularly strong in
itself, while the Montmorency and its rugged valley protected
the only flank which was exposed to attack. Below him spread the
river, here over two miles in width from shore to shore, with
the western point of the island of Orleans overlapping his left
flank. Above the woods of this long, fertile island, then the
garden of Canada, the French, upon June 27th, first caught sight
of the pennons flying from the topmasts of the English
battle-ships, and before evening they witnessed the strange
sight of red-coated infantry swarming over its well-tilled
fields.
Part II.
Wolfe had not much time that evening to consider the
situation, which might well have appalled a less stout heart
than his, for the troops had scarcely landed when a sudden
summer storm burst upon the scene, churned the river into angry
waves, broke some of the smaller ships from their moorings,
casting them upon the rocks, and staving in many of the boats
and rafts. The people of Quebec, who for weeks had been urging
upon the Divinity in their peculiar way that they, his chosen
people, were in danger, would not have been Canadian Catholics
of their generation had they not been jubilant at this undoubted
sign of divine intervention. But Montcalm was the last man to
presume on such favor by any lack of energy. The very next night
the British, having in the mean time pitched their camp upon the
Isle of Orleans, were thrown into no small alarm by the descent
of a fleet of fire-ships.
The only men awake were the guards and sentries at the point,
and as the matches were not applied to the drifting hulks till
they were close at hand, the sudden effect in the darkness of
the night upon the soldiers' nerves was more than they could
stand, having beheld nothing like it in their lives, and they
rushed in much confusion on the sleeping camp, causing still
more there. For it was not alone the flames and the explosives
that were a cause of perturbation, but a hail of grape-shot and
bullets from the igniting guns poured hurtling through the
trees. The chief object of the fire-ships, however, was the
fleet which lay in the channel between the Isle of Orleans and
the shore, and toward it they came steadily drifting. Knox
describes the pandemonium as awful, and the sight as
inconceivably superb of these large burning ships, crammed with
every imaginable explosive and soaked from their mast-heads to
their water-line in pitch and tar. It was no new thing, however,
to the gallant sailors, who treated the matter as a joke,
grappling fearlessly with the hissing, spitting demons, and
towing them ashore. "Damme, Jack," they shouted, "didst ever
take h - ll in tow before?"
This exploit seems to have been a venture of Vaudreuil's, and
its failure, an extremely expensive one, cost that lively
egotist and his friends a severe pang. The next day Wolfe
published his first manifesto to the Canadian people. "We are
sent by the English King," it ran, "to conquer this province,
but not to make war upon women and children, the ministers of
religion, or industrious peasants. We lament the sufferings
which our invasion may inflict upon you: but if you remain
neutral, we proffer you safety in person and property and
freedom in religion. We are masters of the river; no succor can
reach you from France. General Amherst, with a large army,
assails your southern frontier. Your cause is hopeless, your
valor useless. Your nation have been guilty of great cruelties
to our unprotected settlers, but we seek not revenge. We offer
you the sweets of peace amid the horrors of war. England, in her
strength, will befriend you; France, in her weakness, leaves you
to your fate."
Wolfe could hardly have felt the confidence he here
expressed. The longer he looked upon the French position the
less he must have liked it, and the larger must Amherst and his
eventual cooperation have loomed in his mind as a necessary
factor to success. But would Amherst get through to Montreal and
down the St. Lawrence in time to be of use before the short
season had fled? Those who were familiar with the difficulties
would certainly have discouraged the hope which Wolfe for a time
allowed himself to cherish; and Wolfe, though he admired his
friend and chief, did not regard celerity of movement as his
strongest point.
About the first move, however, in the game Wolfe had to play
there could be no possible doubt, and that was the occupation of
Point Levis. This was the high ground immediately facing Quebec,
where the river, narrowing to a width of twelve hundred yards,
brought the city within cannon-shot from the southern bank. It
was the only place, in fact, from which it could be reached. It
is said Montcalm had been anxious to occupy it, and intrench it
with four thousand men, but was overruled on the supposition
that the upper town, about which official Quebec felt most
concern, would be outside its range of fire. If this was so,
they were soon to be undeceived.
The occupation of Point Levis by Monckton's brigade, which
Wolfe now ordered on that service, need not detain us. They
crossed from the camp of Orleans to the village of Beaumont,
which was seized with slight resistance. Thence moving on along
the high road to Point Levis, they found the church and village
occupied by what Knox, who was there, estimates at a thousand
riflemen and Indians. The Grenadiers charging the position in
front, and the Highlanders and light infantry taking it in the
rear, it was stormed with a loss of thirty men, and Monckton
then occupied a position which, so far as artillery fire was
concerned, had Quebec at its mercy. The brigadier, who had fully
expected to find French guns there, at once began to intrench
himself on this conspicuous spot, while floating batteries now
pushed out from Quebec and began throwing shot and shell up at
his working-parties, till Saunders sent a frigate forward to put
an end to what threatened to be a serious annoyance.
The French had changed their minds about the danger of
Monckton's guns, though not a shot had yet been fired, and
agitated loudly for a sortie across the river. Montcalm thought
poorly of the plan; but a miscellaneous force of fifteen hundred
Canadians, possessed of more ardor than cohesion, insisted on
attempting a night assault. They landed some way up the river,
but did not so much as reach the British position. The
difficulties of a combined midnight movement were altogether too
great for such irregulars, and they ended by firing upon one
another in the dark and stampeding for their boats, with a loss
of seventy killed and wounded.
Two brigades were now in midstream on the Isle of Orleans and
one on Point Levis. Landing artillery and stores, intrenching
both positions, and mounting siege-guns at the last-named one
consumed the first few days of July. Wolfe's skill in erecting
and firing batteries had been abundantly demonstrated at
Louisburg; and though his head-quarters were on the island, he
went frequently to superintend the preparations for the
bombardment of Quebec. On July 12th a rocket leaped into the sky
from Wolfe's camp. It was the signal for the forty guns and
mortars that had been mounted on Point Levis to open on the city
that Vaudreuil and his friends had fondly thought was out of
range. The first few shots may have encouraged the delusion, as
they fell short; but the gunners quickly got their distance, and
then began that storm of shot and shell which rained upon the
doomed city, with scarce a respite, for upward of eight weeks.
Houses, churches, and monasteries crashed and crumbled
beneath the pitiless discharge. The great cathedral, where the
memories and the trophies of a century's defiance of the
accursed heretic had so thickly gathered, was gradually reduced
to a skeleton of charred walls. The church of Notre Dame de la
Victoire, erected in gratitude for the delivery of the city from
the last and only previous attack upon it sixty years before,
was one of the first buildings to suffer from the far more
serious punishment of this one. Wolfe, though already suffering
from more than his chronic ill-health, was ubiquitous and
indefatigable; now behind Monckton's guns at Point Levis, now
with Townshend's batteries at Montmorency, now up the river,
ranging with his glass those miles of forbidding cliffs which he
may already have begun to think he should one day have to climb.
Some of Saunder's ships were in the Basin, between Orleans and
Quebec, and frequently engaged with Montcalm's floating
batteries; while in the mean time the roar of artillery from a
dozen different quarters filled the simmering July days, and lit
the short summer nights with fiery shapes, and drew in fitful
floods the roving thunder-clouds that at this season of the year
in North America are apt to lurk behind the serenest sky.
Fighting at close quarters there was, too, in plenty, though
of an outpost and backwoods kind. Bois Herbert, with his painted
Canadians and Abernakis Indians, and Stark and young Rogers with
their colonial rangers - Greek against Greek - scalped each
other with a hereditary ferocity that English and French
regulars knew nothing of. In bringing a fleet up to Quebec,
British sailors had already performed one feat pronounced
impossible by Canadian tradition. They now still further upset
their enemies' calculations by running the gauntlet of the
batteries of Quebec and placing the Sutherland, with several
smaller ships, at some distance up the river. This cost Montcalm
six hundred men, whom he had to send under Dumas to watch the
squadron. But all this brought the end no nearer. Time was
exceeding precious, and July was almost out. Necessary messages
were continually passing under flags of truce, and superfluous
notes of defiance sometimes accompanied them. "You may destroy
the town," said De Ramezay to Wolfe, "but you will never get
inside it." "I will take Quebec," replied the fiery stripling,
"if I stay here till November."
Through the whole weary month of August little occurred that
the exigencies of our space would justify recording. Montcalm
considered himself safe, and he even allowed two thousand
Canadians to leave for the harvest. Wolfe had a thousand men of
his small force sick or wounded in hospital. Amherst, it was
reported, had taken Ticonderoga, but there was little likelihood
of his getting through to their assistance. Prideaux, in the Far
West, as it then was, had captured Niagara. It was a great
success, but it in no way helped Wolfe. It must not be supposed,
however, that August had passed away in humdrum fashion. The
guns had roared with tireless throats, and the lower town was a
heap of ruins. Far away down both banks of the St. Lawrence the
dogs of war had raged through seigniories and hamlets. Between
the upper and the nether millstone of Wolfe's proclamations and
Montcalm's vengeance, the wretched peasantry were in a sore
plight. Raided through and through by the fierce guerillas of
North American warfare, swept bare of grain and cattle for
Wolfe's army, the fugitives from smoking farms and hamlets were
glad to seek refuge in the English lines, where the soldiers
generously shared with them their meagre rations. More than one
expedition had been sent up the river. Admiral Holmes, with over
twenty ships, was alredy above the town, and had driven the
French vessels, which had originally taken refuge there, to
discharge their crews and run up shallow tributaries.
Wolfe's intention now was to place every man that he could
spare on board the ships in the upper river, and his entire
force was reduced by death, wounds, and sickness to under seven
thousand men. On September 3d, with slight annoyance from an
ill-directed cannon fire, he removed the whole force at
Montmorency across the water to the camps of Orleans or Point
Levis. On the following day all the troops at both these
stations which were not necessary for their protection were
paraded; for what purpose no one knew, least of all the French,
who from their lofty lines could mark every movement in the wide
panorama below, and were sorely puzzled and perturbed. Some
great endeavor was in the wind, beyond a doubt; but both Wolfe
and his faithful ally, the admiral, did their utmost to disguise
its import. And for this very reason it would be futile, even if
necessary, to follow the fluctuating manoeuvres that for the
next few days kept the enemy in constant agitation: the sudden
rage of batteries here, the threatening demonstrations of
troop-laden boats there, the constant and bewildering movement
of armed ships at every point. It was well designed and
industriously maintained, for the sole purpose of harassing the
French and covering Wolfe's real intention.
On the night of September 4th the general was well enough to
dine with Monckton's officers at Point Levis, but the next day
he was again prostrate with illness, to the great anxiety of his
army. He implored the doctor to "patch him up sufficiently for
the work in hand; after that nothing mattered." Chronic gravel
and rheumatism, with a sharp low fever, aggravated by a mental
strain of the severest kind, all preying on a sickly frame, were
what the indomitable spirit there imprisoned had to wrestle
with. On the 6th, however, Wolfe struggled up, and during that
day and the next superintended the march of his picked column,
numbering some four thousand men, up the south bank of the
river. Fording, near waist-deep, the Etchemain River, they were
received beyond its mouth by the boats of the fleet, and, as
each detachment arrived, conveyed on board. The Forty-eighth,
however, seven hundred strong, were left, under Colonel Burton,
near Point Levis to await orders.
The fleet, with Wolfe and some thirty-six hundred men on
board, now moved up to Cap Rouge, behind which, at the first dip
in the high barrier of cliffs, was Bougainville with fifteen
hundred men (soon afterward increased), exclusive of three
hundred serviceable light cavalry. The cove here was intrenched,
and the French commander was so harried with feigned attacks
that he and his people had no rest. At the same time, so well
was the universal activity maintained that Montcalm, eight miles
below, was led to expect a general attack at the mouth of the
Charles River, under the city. Throughout the 8th and 9th the
weather was dark and rainy and the wind from the east, an
unfavorable combination for a movement requiring the utmost
precision. On the 10th the troops from the crowded ships were
landed to dry their clothes and accoutrements. Wolfe and his
brigadiers now finally surveyed that line of cliffs which
Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole
British army. It was defended here and there by small posts.
Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces
of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made
out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded.
Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he decided to make his
attempt.
The ships, however, kept drifting up and down between Cap
Rouge and the city, with a view to maintaining the suspense of
the French. Each morning Wolfe's general orders to the soldiers
were to hold themselves in readiness for immediate action, with
as full directions for their conduct as was compatible with the
suppression of the spot at which they were to fight. On the
night of the 11th the troops were reembarked, and instructions
sent to Burton to post the Forty-eighth on the south shore
opposite the Anse du Foulon. On the following day Wolfe
published his last orders, and they contained a notable
sentence: "A vigorous blow struck by the army at this juncture
may determine the fate of Canada." Almost at the same moment his
gallant opponent from his head-quarters at Beauport was writing
to Bourlamaque at Montreal that he gave the enemy a month or
less to stay, but that he himself had no rest night or day, and
had not had his boots or clothes off for a fortnight. Another
Frenchman was informing his friends that what they knew of that
"impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior, Monsieur Wolfe," gave
them reason to suppose he would not leave them without another
attack.
A suspicious calm brooded over the British squadron off Cap
Rouge as Bougainville watched it from the shore throughout the
whole of the 12th. The men were under orders to drop into their
boats at nine, and were doubtless busy looking to their arms and
accoutrements. By a preconcerted arrangement the day was spent
after a very different fashion in the Basin of Quebec. Constant
artillery fire and the continual movement of troops against
various parts of the Beauport lines engaged the whole attention
of Montcalm, who had, in fact, little notion what a number of
men had gone up the river with Wolfe.
When night fell upon the ruined city and the flickering
campfires of the long French lines, the tumult grew louder and
the anxiety greater. The batteries of Point Levis and the guns
of Saunders' ships redoubled their efforts. Amid the roar of the
fierce artillery, served with an activity not surpassed during
the whole siege, Montcalm, booted and spurred, with his black
charger saddled at the door, awaited some night attack. The
horse would be wanted yet, but for a longer ride than his master
anticipated, and, as it so turned out, for his last one. Up the
river at Cap Rouge all was silence, a strange contrast to the
din below. The night was fine, but dark, and was some three
hours old when a single light gleamed of a sudden from the
Sutherland's main-mast. It was the signal for sixteen hundred
men to drop quietly into their boats. A long interval of silence
and suspense then followed, till at two o'clock the tide began
to ebb, when a second lantern glimmered from Wolfe's ship. The
boats now pushed off and drifted quietly down in long procession
under the deep shadow of the high northern shore.
The ships followed at some distance with the remainder of the
force under Townshend, the Forty-eighth, it will be remembered,
awaiting them below. The distance to be traversed was six miles,
and there were two posts on the cliffs to be passed. French
provision-boats had been in the habit of stealing down in the
night, and to this fact, coupled with the darkness, it seems
Wolfe trusted much. He was himself in one of the leading boats,
and the story of his reciting Gray's Elegy, in solemn tones
while he drifted down, as he hoped, to victory and, as he
believed, to death, rests on good authority. ^1 [Footnote 1:
That of Professor Robinson, of Edinburgh University, who was
present as a midshipman.]
The tide was running fast, so that the rowers could ply their
oars with a minimum of disturbance. From both posts upon the
cliff their presence was noticed, and the challenge of a sentry
rang out clear upon the silent night. On each occasion a
Highland officer, who spoke French perfectly, replied that they
were a provision convoy, to the satisfaction of the challengers.
But the risk was undeniable, and illustrates the hazardous
nature of the enterprise. Wolfe's friend, Captain Howe, brother
of the popular young nobleman who fell at Ticonderoga, with a
small body of picked soldiers, was to lead the ascent, and as
the boats touched the narrow beach of the Anse de Foulon he and
his volunteers leaped rapidly on shore. Some of the boats
accidentally overran the spot, but it made little difference, as
the narrow path was, in any case, found to be blocked, and the
eager soldiers were forced to throw themselves upon the rough
face of the cliff, which was here over two hundred feet high,
but fortunately sprinkled thick with stunted bushes. Swiftly and
silently Howe and his men scrambled up its steep face. No less
eagerly the men behind, as boat after boat discharged its load
of red-coats under Wolfe's eye on the narrow shore, followed in
their precarious steps.
Day was just beginning to glimmer as the leading files leaped
out onto the summit and rushed upon the handful of astonished
Frenchmen before them, who fired a futile volley and fled. The
shots and cries alarmed other posts at some distance off, yet
near enough to fire in the direction of the landing-boats. It
was too late, however; the path had now been cleared of
obstacles, and the British were swarming onto the plateau. The
first sixteen hundred men had been rapidly disembarked, and the
boats were already dashing back for Townshend's brigade, who
were approaching in the ships, and for the Forty-eighth,
awaiting them on the opposite shore.
The scattered French posts along the summit were easily
dispersed, while the main army at Beauport, some miles away, on
the far side of the city, were as yet unconscious of danger.
Bougainville and his force back at Cap Rouge were as far off and
as yet no wiser. Quebec had just caught the alarm, but its weak
and heterogeneous garrison had no power for combined mobility.
By six o'clock Wolfe had his whole force of forty-three hundred
men drawn up on the plateau, with their backs to the river and
their faces to the north. Leaving the Royal Americans, five
hundred forty strong, to guard the landing-place, and with a
force thus reduced to under four thousand he now marched toward
the city, bringing his left round at the same time in such
fashion as to face the western walls, scarcely a mile distant.
As Wolfe drew up his line of battle on that historic ridge of
table-land known as the Plains of Abraham, his right rested on
the cliff above the river, while his left approached the then
brushy slope which led down toward the St. Charles Valley. He
had outmanoeuvred Montcalm; it now remained only to crush him.
Of this Wolfe had not much doubt, though such confidence may
seem sufficiently audacious for the leader of four thousand men,
with twice that number in front of him and half as many in his
rear, both forces commanded by brave and skilful generals. But
Wolfe counted on quality, not on numbers, which Montcalm himself
realized were of doubtful efficacy at this crucial moment.
The French general, in the mean time, had been expecting an
attack all night at Beauport, and his troops had been lying on
their arms. It was about six o'clock when the astounding news
was brought him that the British were on the plateau behind the
city. The Scotch Jacobite, the Chevalier Johnstone, who has left
us an account of the affair, was with him at the time, and they
leaped on their horses - he to give the alarm toward
Montmorency, the general to hasten westward by Vaudreuil's
quarters to the city. "This is a serious business," said
Montcalm to Johnstone as he dug his spurs into his horse's
flanks. Vaudreuil, who in his braggart, amateur fashion had been
"crushing the English" with pen and ink and verbal eloquence
this last six weeks, now collapsed, and Montcalm, who knew what
a fight in the open with Wolfe meant, hastened himself to hurry
forward every man that could be spared.
Fifteen hundred militia were left to guard the Beauport
lines, while the bulk of the army poured in a steady stream
along the road to Quebec, over the bridge of the St. Charles,
some up the slopes beyond, others through the tortuous streets
of the city, on to the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm, by some at
the time, and by many since, has been blamed for precipitating
the conflict, but surely not with justice! He had every reason
to count on Bougainville and his twenty-three hundred men, who
were no farther from Wolfe's rear than he himself was from the
English front. The British held the entire water. Wolfe once
intrenched on the plateau, the rest of his army, guns, and
stores could be brought up at will, and the city defences on
that side were almost worthless. Lastly, provisions with the
French were wofully scarce; the lower country had been swept
absolutely bare. Montcalm depended on Montreal for every
mouthful of food, and Wolfe was now between him and his source
of supply.
By nine o'clock Montcalm had all his men in front of the
western walls of the city and was face to face with Wolfe, only
half a mile separating them. His old veterans of William Henry,
Oswego, and Ticonderoga were with him, the reduced regiments of
Bearn, Royal Rousillon, Languedoc, La Sarre, and La Guienne,
some thirteen hundred strong, with seven hundred colony regulars
and a cloud of militia and Indians. Numbers of these latter had
been pushed forward as skirmishers into the thickets, woods, and
cornfields which fringed the battle-field, and had caused great
annoyance and some loss to the British, who were lying down in
their ranks, reserving their strength and their ammunition for a
supreme effort. Three pieces of cannon, too, had been brought to
play on them - no small trial to their steadiness; for,
confident of victory, it was not to Wolfe's interest to join
issue till Montcalm had enough of his men upon the ridge to give
finality to such a blow. At the same time the expected approach
of Bougainville in the rear had to be watched for and
anticipated.
It was indeed a critical and anxious moment! The Forty-eighth
regiment were stationed as a reserve of Wolfe's line, though to
act as a check rather to danger from Bougainville than as a
support to the front attacks in which they took no part. Part,
too, of Townshend's brigade, who occupied the left of the line
nearest to the wooded slopes in which the plain terminated, were
drawn up en potence, or at right angles to the main column, in
case of attacks from flank or rear. The Bougainville incident
is, in fact, a feature of this critical struggle that has been
too generally ignored, but in such a fashion that inferences
might be drawn, and have been drawn, detrimental to that able
officer's sagacity. Theoretically he should have burst on the
rear of Wolfe's small army, as it attacked Montcalm, with more
than twenty-three hundred tolerable troops.
He was but six miles off, and it was now almost as many hours
since the British scaled the cliff. Pickets and a small battery
or two between himself and Wolfe had been early in the morning
actually engaged. The simple answer is that Bougainville
remained ignorant of what was happening. Nothing but an actual
messenger coming through with the news would have enlightened
him, and in the confusion none came till eight o'clock. The
sound of desultory firing borne faintly against the wind from
the neighborhood of the city had little significance for him. It
was a chronic condition of affairs, and Bougainville's business
was to watch the upper river, where an attack was really
expected. It was a rare piece of good-fortune for Wolfe that the
confusion among the French was so great as to cause this strange
omission. But then it was Wolfe's daring that had thus robbed a
brave enemy of their presence of mind and created so pardonable
a confusion.
The constituents of that ever-memorable line of battle which
Wolfe drew up on the Plains of Abraham must of a surety not be
grudged space in this account. On the right toward the cliffs of
the St. Lawrence were the Twenty-eighth, the Thirty-fifth, the
Forty-third, and the Louisburg Grenadiers under Monckton; in the
centre, under Murray, were the Forty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, and
the Seventy-eighth Highlanders; with Townshend on the left were
the Fifteenth (en potence) and the Second battalion of the
Sixtieth or Royal Americans - in all somewhat over three
thousand men. In reserve, as already stated, was Burton with the
Forty-eighth, while Howe with some light infantry occupied the
woods still farther back, and the Third battalion of the
Sixtieth guarded the landing-place. None of these last corps
joined in the actual attack.
When Montcalm, toward ten o'clock, under a cloudy but
fast-clearing sky, gave the order to advance, he had, at the
lowest estimate from French sources, about thirty-five hundred
men, exclusive of Indians and flanking skirmishers, who may be
rated at a further fifteen hundred. The armies were but half a
mile apart, and the French regulars and militia, being carefully
but perhaps injudiciously blended along their whole line, went
forward with loud shouts to the attack.
The British, formed in a triple line, now sprang to their
feet and moved steadily forward to receive the onset of the
French. Wolfe had been hit on the wrist, but hastily binding up
the shattered limb with his handkerchief, he now placed himself
at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers, whose temerity against
the heights of Beauport, in July, he had soundly rated. He had
issued strict orders that his troops were to load with two
bullets, and to reserve their fire till the enemy were at close
quarters. He was nobly obeyed, though the French columns came on
firing wildly and rapidly at long range, the militia throwing
themselves down, after their backwoods custom, to reload, to the
disadvantage of the regular regiments among whom they were
mixed. The British fire, in spite of considerable punishment,
was admirably restrained, and when delivered it was terrible.
Knox tells us that the French received it at forty paces,
that the volleys sounded like single cannon-shots, so great was
the precision, and French officers subsequently declared they
had never known anything like it. Whole gaps were rent in the
French ranks, and in the confusion which followed the British
reloaded with deliberation, poured in yet another deadly volley,
and with a wild cheer rushed upon the foe. They were the pick of
a picked army, and the shattered French, inured to arms in
various ways though every man of them was, had not a chance.
Montcalm's two thousand regulars were ill-supported by the still
larger number of their comrades, who, unsurpassed behind
breastworks or in forest warfare, were of little use before such
an onslaught. The rush of steel, of bayonet on the right and
centre, of broadsword on the left, swept everything before it
and soon broke the French into a flying mob, checked here and
there by brave bands of white-coated regulars, who offered a
brief but futile resistance.
Wolfe, in the mean time, was eagerly pressing forward at the
head of his Grenadiers, while behind him were the Twenty-eighth
and the Thirty-fifth, of Lake George renown. One may not pause
here to speculate on the triumph that must at such a moment have
fired the bright eyes that redeemed his homely face and
galvanized the sickly frame into a very Paladin of old, as sword
in hand he led his charging troops. Such inevitable reflections
belong rather to his own story than to that of the long war
which he so signally influenced, and it was now, in the very
moment of victory, as all the world well knows, that he fell.
He was hit twice in rapid succession - a ball in the groin
which did not stop him, and a second through the lungs, against
which his high courage fought in vain. He was seen to stagger by
Lieutenant Browne of the Grenadiers and Second regiment, who
rushed forward to his assistance. "Support me," exclaimed Wolfe,
"lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." But the lieutenant
was just too late, and the wounded hero sank to the ground; not,
however, before he was also seen by Mr. Henderson, a volunteer,
and almost immediately afterward by an officer of artillery,
Colonel Williamson, and a private soldier whose name has not
been preserved. The accurate Knox himself was not far off, and
this is the account given him by Browne that same evening, and
seems worthy to hold the field against the innumerable claims
that have been set up in the erratic interests of "family
tradition."
These four men carried the dying general to the rear, and by
his own request, being in great pain, laid him upon the ground.
He refused to see a surgeon, declared it was all over with him,
and sank into a state of torpor. "They run; see how they run!"
cried out one of the officers. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, suddenly
rousing himself. "The enemy, sir; egad, they give way
everywhere." "Go, one of you, my lads," said the dying general,
"with all speed to Colonel Burton, and tell him to march down to
the St. Charles River and cut off the retreat of the fugitives
to the bridge." He then turned on his side, and exclaiming, "God
be praised, I now die in peace," sank into insensibility, and in
a short time, on the ground of his victory which for all time
was to influence the destinies of mankind, gave up his life
contentedly at the very moment, to quote Pitt's stirring eulogy,
"when his fame began."
