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." Newcastle
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 defence 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 Île 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 reënforcements, 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 militia-man 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.
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 Lévis. 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 Lévis 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 Lévis, 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 Lévis. 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 Lévis 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 Lévis, 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 Saunders' 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."