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 already 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 Lévis. 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 Lévis, 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 Lévis 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 reëmbarked,
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 Lévis 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.[43]
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 du 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 woefully 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 Béarn, 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[43] That of Professor Robinson, of Edinburgh University, who was
present as a midshipman.
USURPATION OF CATHARINE II IN RUSSIA
A.D. 1762
W. KNOX JOHNSON
"No sovereign since Ivan the Terrible," says Rambaud, "extended the
frontiers of the empire by such vast conquests" as those of
Catharine II. "She gave Russia for boundaries the Niemen, the
Dniester, and the Black Sea." This aggrandizement, which was her own
boast, was a sufficient compensation to Russia, if not to history,
for the crimes charged against Catharine both at home and elsewhere
in the scenes of her political and military triumphs. Her
participation in the three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795)
associated her name forever with the long and pathetic tragedy of
that nation.
Voltaire, whose admiration for Catharine engages Johnson's
attention, seems really to have regarded her as the political
teacher of Europe, for, referring to her, he said, "Light now comes
from the North." The woman who so enslaved men of genius and
enlarged the empire which Peter the Great had already made powerful,
was not herself a Russian. She was born at Stettin, Prussian
Pomerania, in 1729, the daughter of Christian Augustus, Prince of
Anhalt-Zerbst and Governor of Stettin.
Johnson gives an interesting account of her introduction to the
court of the Empress (Czarina) Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter
the Great and Catharine I. His story of her marriage and sudden
usurpation of the throne is a spirited picture of a dark event in
her career. Above all, he furnishes a most animated and searching
analysis of her character and acts, and of her relations with great
personages of her day. His critical observations, happily blending
with the historical review, shed a revealing light upon this famous
ruler and her reign.
It is January, 1744, and the commandant of Stettin, Prince of
Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg, is keeping New-Year festivities at his castle
of Zerbst, when suddenly couriers from Berlin, couriers from St.
Petersburg, throw everyone into wild commotion. For the Czarina
Elizabeth, casting about for a wife for her nephew, the young grand duke
Peter of Holstein, nominated heir-presumptive to all the Russias, has
accepted advice from Frederick, soon to become "the Great." She is
formally desirous of a visit from the Princess of Zerbst and her
daughter, Sophie Frederika, now fifteen years of age, and already
noticeable for her good looks and good-sense. Not a moment is to be
lost. So eastward, northward, the sleighs hurry them through the white
leagues of snow, to arrive within six weeks at the Russian court, now
established in Moscow; with little state or ceremony, nevertheless, for
the princely house of Zerbst is poor as it is ancient. Sophie's
wardrobe, she informs us herself, consists just of three, or it may be
four, dresses, with twelve chemises. For here begins that singular
autobiography; an unauthenticated fragment, it is true, but a
self-portraiture convincing as any in literature.