"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
--SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The year 1759 is a golden one in British history. A great French army
that threatened Hanover was overthrown at Minden, chiefly by the heroic
stupidity of six British regiments, who, mistaking their orders, charged
the entire French cavalry in line, and destroyed them. "I have seen,"
said the astonished French general, "what I never thought to be
possible--a single line of infantry break through three lines of cavalry
ranked in order of battle, and tumble them into ruin!" Contades omitted
to add that this astonishing infantry, charging cavalry in open
formation, was scourged during their entire advance by powerful batteries
on their flank. At Quiberon, in the same year, Hawke, amid a tempest,
destroyed a mighty fleet that threatened England with invasion; and on
the heights of Abraham, Wolfe broke the French power in America. "We are
forced," said Horace Walpole, the wit of his day, "to ask every morning
what new victory there is, for fear of missing one." Yet, of all the
great deeds of that _annus mirabilis_, the victory which overthrew
Montcalm and gave Quebec to England--a victory achieved by the genius of
Pitt and the daring of Wolfe--was, if not the most shining in quality,
the most far-reaching in its results. "With the triumph of Wolfe on the
heights of Abraham," says Green, "began the history of the United States."
The hero of that historic fight wore a singularly unheroic aspect.
Wolfe's face, in the famous picture by West, resembles that of a nervous
and sentimental boy--he was an adjutant at sixteen, and only thirty-three
when he fell, mortally wounded, under the walls of Quebec. His forehead
and chin receded; his nose, tip-tilted heavenwards, formed with his other
features the point of an obtuse triangle. His hair was fiery red, his
shoulders narrow, his legs a pair of attenuated spindle-shanks; he was a
chronic invalid. But between his fiery poll and his plebeian and
upturned nose flashed a pair of eyes--keen, piercing, and steady--worthy
of Caesar or of Napoleon. In warlike genius he was on land as Nelson was
on sea, chivalrous, fiery, intense. A "magnetic" man, with a strange
gift of impressing himself on the imagination of his soldiers, and of so
penetrating the whole force he commanded with his own spirit that in his
hands it became a terrible and almost resistless instrument of war. The
gift for choosing fit agents is one of the highest qualities of genius;
and it is a sign of Pitt's piercing insight into character that, for the
great task of overthrowing the French power in Canada, he chose what
seemed to commonplace vision a rickety, hypochondriacal, and very
youthful colonel like Wolfe.
Pitt's strategy for the American campaign was spacious, not to say
grandiose. A line of strong French posts, ranging from Duquesne, on the
Ohio, to Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, held the English settlements on
the coast girdled, as in an iron band, from all extension westward; while
Quebec, perched in almost impregnable strength on the frowning cliffs
which look down on the St. Lawrence, was the centre of the French power
in Canada. Pitt's plan was that Amherst, with 12,000 men, should capture
Ticonderoga; Prideaux, with another powerful force, should carry
Montreal; and Wolfe, with 7000 men, should invest Quebec, where Amherst
and Prideaux were to join him. Two-thirds of this great plan broke down.
Amherst and Prideaux, indeed, succeeded in their local operations, but
neither was able to join Wolfe, who had to carry out with one army the
task for which three were designed.
On June 21, 1759, the advanced squadron of the fleet conveying Wolfe came
working up the St. Lawrence. To deceive the enemy they flew the white
flag, and, as the eight great ships came abreast of the Island of
Orleans, the good people of Quebec persuaded themselves it was a French
fleet bringing supplies and reinforcements. The bells rang a welcome;
flags waved. Boats put eagerly off to greet the approaching ships. But
as these swung round at their anchorage the white flag of France
disappeared, and the red ensign of Great Britain flew in its place. The
crowds, struck suddenly dumb, watched the gleam of the hostile flag with
chap-fallen faces. A priest, who was staring at the ships through a
telescope, actually dropped dead with the excitement and passion created
by the sight of the British fleet. On June 26 the main body of the fleet
bringing Wolfe himself with 7000 troops, was in sight of the lofty cliffs
on which Quebec stands; Cook, afterwards the famous navigator, master of
the _Mercury_, sounding ahead of the fleet. Wolfe at once seized the
Isle of Orleans, which shelters the basin of Quebec to the east, and
divides the St. Lawrence into two branches, and, with a few officers,
quickly stood on the western point of the isle. At a glance the
desperate nature of the task committed to him was apparent.
[Illustration: Siege of Quebec, 1759. From Parkman's "Montcalm & Wolfe."]
Quebec stands on the rocky nose of a promontory, shaped roughly like a
bull's-head, looking eastward. The St. Lawrence flows eastward under the
chin of the head; the St. Charles runs, so to speak, down its nose from
the north to meet the St. Lawrence. The city itself stands on lofty
cliffs, and as Wolfe looked upon it on that June evening far away, it was
girt and crowned with batteries. The banks of the St. Lawrence, that
define what we have called the throat of the bull, are precipitous and
lofty, and seem by mere natural strength to defy attack, though it was
just here, by an ant-like track up 250 feet of almost perpendicular
cliff, Wolfe actually climbed to the plains of Abraham. To the east of
Quebec is a curve of lofty shore, seven miles long, between the St.
Charles and the Montmorenci. When Wolfe's eye followed those seven miles
of curving shore, he saw the tents of a French army double his own in
strength, and commanded by the most brilliant French soldier of his
generation, Montcalm. Quebec, in a word, was a great natural fortress,
attacked by 9000 troops and defended by 16,000; and if a daring military
genius urged the English attack, a soldier as daring and well-nigh as
able as Wolfe directed the French defence.
Montcalm gave a proof of his fine quality as a soldier within twenty-four
hours of the appearance of the British fleet. The very afternoon the
British ships dropped anchor a terrific tempest swept over the harbour,
drove the transports from their moorings, dashed the great ships of war
against each other, and wrought immense mischief. The tempest dropped as
quickly as it had arisen. The night fell black and moonless. Towards
midnight the British sentinels on the point of the Isle of Orleans saw
drifting silently through the gloom the outlines of a cluster of ships.
They were eight huge fire-ships, floating mines packed with explosives.
The nerve of the French sailors, fortunately for the British, failed
them, and they fired the ships too soon. But the spectacle of these
flaming monsters as they drifted towards the British fleet was appalling.
The river showed ebony-black under the white flames. The glare lit up
the river cliffs, the roofs of the city, the tents of Montcalm, the
slopes of the distant hills, the black hulls of the British ships. It
was one of the most stupendous exhibitions of fireworks ever witnessed!
But it was almost as harmless as a display of fireworks. The boats from
the British fleet were by this time in the water, and pulling with steady
daring to meet these drifting volcanoes. They were grappled, towed to
the banks, and stranded, and there they spluttered and smoked and flamed
till the white light of the dawn broke over them. The only mischief
achieved by these fire-ships was to burn alive one of their own captains
and five or six of his men, who failed to escape in their boats.
Wolfe, in addition to the Isle of Orleans, seized Point Levi, opposite
the city, and this gave him complete command of the basin of Quebec; from
his batteries on Point Levi, too, he could fire directly on the city, and
destroy it if he could not capture it. He himself landed the main body
of his troops on the east bank of the Montmorenci, Montcalm's position,
strongly entrenched, being between him and the city. Between the two
armies, however, ran the deep gorge through which the swift current of
the Montmorenci rushes down to join the St. Lawrence. The gorge is
barely a gunshot in width, but of stupendous depth. The Montmorenci
tumbles over its rocky bed with a speed that turns the flashing waters
almost to the whiteness of snow. Was there ever a more curious military
position adopted by a great general in the face of superior forces!
Wolfe's tiny army was distributed into three camps: his right wing on the
Montmorenci was six miles distant from his left wing at Point Levi, and
between the centre, on the Isle of Orleans, and the two wings, ran the
two branches of the St. Lawrence. That Wolfe deliberately made such a
distribution of his forces under the very eyes of Montcalm showed his
amazing daring. And yet beyond firing across the Montmorenci on
Montcalm's left wing, and bombarding the city from Point Levi, the
British general could accomplish nothing. Montcalm knew that winter must
compel Wolfe to retreat, and he remained stubbornly but warily on the
defensive.
On July 18 the British performed a daring feat. In the darkness of the
night two of the men-of-war and several sloops ran past the Quebec
batteries and reached the river above the town; they destroyed some
fireships they found there, and cut off Montcalm's communication by water
with Montreal. This rendered it necessary for the French to establish
guards on the line of precipices between Quebec and Cap-Rouge. On July
28 the French repeated the experiment of fire-ships on a still more
gigantic scale. A vast fire-raft was constructed, composed of some
seventy schooners, boats, and rafts, chained together, and loaded with
combustibles and explosives. The fire-raft is described as being 100
fathoms in length, and its appearance, as it came drifting on the
current, a mass of roaring fire, discharging every instant a shower of
missiles, was terrifying. But the British sailors dashed down upon it,
broke the huge raft into fragments, and towed them easily ashore. "Hang
it, Jack," one sailor was heard to say to his mate as he tugged at the
oar, "didst thee ever take hell in tow before?"
Time was on Montcalm's side, and unless Wolfe could draw him from his
impregnable entrenchments and compel him to fight, the game was lost.
When the tide fell, a stretch of shoal a few score yards wide was left
bare on the French side of the Montmorenci. The slope that covered this
was steep, slippery with grass, crowned by a great battery, and swept by
the cross-fire of entrenchments on either flank. Montcalm, too, holding
the interior lines, could bring to the defence of this point twice the
force with which Wolfe could attack it. Yet to Wolfe's keen eyes this
seemed the one vulnerable point in Montcalm's front, and on July 31 he
made a desperate leap upon it.
The attack was planned with great art. The British batteries thundered
across the Montmorenci, and a feint was made of fording that river higher
up, so as to distract the attention of the French, whilst the boats of
the fleet threatened a landing near Quebec itself. At half-past five the
tide was at its lowest, and the boat-flotilla, swinging round at a
signal, pulled at speed for the patch of muddy foreshore already
selected. The Grenadiers and Royal Americans leaped ashore in the mud,
and--waiting neither for orders, nor leaders, nor supports--dashed up the
hill to storm the redoubt. They reached the first redoubt, tumbled over
it and through it, only to find themselves breathless in a semi-circle of
fire. The men fell fast, but yet struggled fiercely upwards. A furious
storm of rain broke over the combatants at that moment, and made the
steep grass-covered slope as slippery as mere glass. "We could not see
half-way down the hill," writes the French officer in command of the
battery on the summit. But through the smoke and the driving rain they
could still see the Grenadiers and Royal Americans in ragged clusters,
scarce able to stand, yet striving desperately to climb upwards. The
reckless ardour of the Grenadiers had spoiled Wolfe's attack, the sudden
storm helped to save the French, and Wolfe withdrew his broken but
furious battalions, having lost some 500 of his best men and officers.
The exultant French regarded the siege as practically over; but Wolfe was
a man of heroic and quenchless tenacity, and never so dangerous as when
he seemed to be in the last straits. He held doggedly on, in spite of
cold and tempest and disease. His own frail body broke down, and for the
first time the shadow of depression fell on the British camps when they
no longer saw the red head and lean and scraggy body of their general
moving amongst them. For a week, between August 22 and August 29, he lay
apparently a dying man, his face, with its curious angles, white with
pain and haggard with disease. But he struggled out again, and framed
yet new plans of attack. On September 10 the captains of the men-of-war
held a council on board the flagship, and resolved that the approach of
winter required the fleet to leave Quebec without delay. By this time,
too, Wolfe's scanty force was diminished one-seventh by disease or losses
in battle. Wolfe, however had now formed the plan which ultimately gave
him success, though at the cost of his own life.
From a tiny little cove, now known as Wolfe's Cove, five miles to the
west of Quebec, a path, scarcely accessible to a goat, climbs up the face
of the great cliff, nearly 250 feet high. The place was so inaccessible
that only a post of 100 men kept guard over it. Up that track, in the
blackness of the night, Wolfe resolved to lead his army to the attack on
Quebec! It needed the most exquisite combinations to bring the attacking
force to that point from three separate quarters, in the gloom of night,
at a given moment, and without a sound that could alarm the enemy. Wolfe
withdrew his force from the Montmorenci, embarked them on board his
ships, and made every sign of departure. Montcalm mistrusted these
signs, and suspected Wolfe would make at least one more leap on Quebec
before withdrawing. Yet he did not in the least suspect Wolfe's real
designs. He discussed, in fact, the very plan Wolfe adopted, but
dismissed it by saying, "We need not suppose that the enemy have wings."
The British ships were kept moving up and down the river front for
several days, so as to distract and perplex the enemy. On September 12
Wolfe's plans were complete, and he issued his final orders. One
sentence in them curiously anticipates Nelson's famous signal at
Trafalgar. "Officers and men," wrote Wolfe, "_will remember what their
country expects of them_." A feint on Beauport, five miles to the east
of Quebec, as evening fell, made Montcalm mass his troops there; but it
was at a point five miles west of Quebec the real attack was directed.
At two o'clock at night two lanterns appeared for a minute in the maintop
shrouds of the _Sunderland_. It was the signal, and from the fleet, from
the Isle of Orleans, and from Point Levi, the English boats stole
silently out, freighted with some 1700 troops, and converged towards the
point in the black wall of cliffs agreed upon. Wolfe himself was in the
leading boat of the flotilla. As the boats drifted silently through the
darkness on that desperate adventure, Wolfe, to the officers about him,
commenced to recite Gray's "Elegy":--
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
"Now, gentlemen," he added, "I would rather have written that poem than
take Quebec." Wolfe, in fact, was half poet, half soldier. Suddenly
from the great wall of rock and forest to their left broke the challenge
of a French sentinel--"_Qui vive_?" A Highland officer of Fraser's
regiment, who spoke French fluently, answered the challenge. "_France_."
"_A quel regiment_?" "_De la Reine_," answered the Highlander. As it
happened the French expected a flotilla of provision boats, and after a
little further dialogue, in which the cool Highlander completely deceived
the French sentries, the British were allowed to slip past in the
darkness. The tiny cove was safely reached, the boats stole silently up
without a blunder, twenty-four volunteers from the Light Infantry leaped
from their boat and led the way in single file up the path, that ran like
a thread along the face of the cliff. Wolfe sat eagerly listening in his
boat below. Suddenly from the summit he saw the flash of the muskets and
heard the stern shout which told him his men were up. A clear, firm
order, and the troops sitting silent in the boats leaped ashore, and the
long file of soldiers, like a chain of ants, went up the face of the
cliff, Wolfe amongst the foremost, and formed in order on the plateau,
the boats meanwhile rowing back at speed to bring up the remainder of the
troops. Wolfe was at last within Montcalm's guard!
When the morning of the 13th dawned, the British army, in line of battle,
stood looking down on Quebec. Montcalm quickly heard the news, and came
riding furiously across the St. Charles and past the city to the scene of
danger. He rode, as those who saw him tell, with a fixed look, and
uttering not a word. The vigilance of months was rendered worthless by
that amazing night escalade. When he reached the slopes Montcalm saw
before him the silent red wall of British infantry, the Highlanders with
waving tartans and wind-blown plumes--all in battle array. It was not a
detachment, but an army!
The fight lasted fifteen minutes, and might be told in almost as many
words. Montcalm brought on his men in three powerful columns, in number
double that of Wolfe's force. The British troops stood grimly silent,
though they were tormented by the fire of Indians and Canadians lying in
the grass. The French advanced eagerly, with a tumult of shouts and a
confused fire; the British moved forward a few rods, halted, dressed
their lines, and when the French were within forty paces threw in one
fierce volley, so sharply timed that the explosion of 4000 muskets
sounded like the sudden blast of a cannon. Again, again, and yet again,
the flame ran from end to end of the steadfast hue. When the smoke
lifted, the French column were wrecked. The British instantly charged.
The spirit of the clan awoke in Fraser's Highlanders: they flung aside
their muskets, drew their broadswords, and with a fierce Celtic slogan
rushed on the enemy. Never was a charge pressed more ruthlessly home.
After the fight one of the British officers wrote: "There was not a
bayonet in the three leading British regiments, nor a broadsword amongst
the Highlanders, that was not crimson with the blood of a foeman." Wolfe
himself charged at the head of the Grenadiers, his bright uniform making
him conspicuous. He was shot in the wrist, wrapped a handkerchief round
the wound, and still ran forward. Two other bullets struck him--one, it
is said, fired by a British deserter, a sergeant broken by Wolfe for
brutality to a private. "Don't let the soldiers see me drop," said
Wolfe, as he fell, to an officer running beside him. An officer of the
Grenadiers, a gentleman volunteer, and a private carried Wolfe to a
redoubt near. He refused to allow a surgeon to be called. "There is no
need," he said, "it is all over with me." Then one of the little group,
casting a look at the smoke-covered battlefield, cried, "They run! See
how they run!" "Who run?" said the dying Wolfe, like a man roused from
sleep. "The enemy, sir," was the answer. A flash of life came back to
Wolfe; the eager spirit thrust from it the swoon of death; he gave a
clear, emphatic order for cutting off the enemy's retreat; then, turning
on his side, he added, "Now God be praised; I die in peace."
That fight determined that the North American continent should be the
heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race. And, somehow, the popular instinct,
when the news reached England, realised the historic significance of the
event. "When we first heard of Wolfe's glorious deed," writes Thackeray
in "The Virginians"--"of that army marshalled in darkness and carried
silently up the midnight river--of those rocks scaled by the intrepid
leader and his troops--of the defeat of Montcalm on the open plain by the
sheer valour of his conqueror--we were all intoxicated in England by the
news." Not merely all London but half England flamed into illuminations.
One spot alone was dark--Blackheath, where, solitary amidst a rejoicing
nation, Wolfe's mother mourned for her heroic son--like Milton's
Lycidas--"dead ere his prime."