Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham proved decisive in the end; but
it was not the last of the great struggle for the Key of Canada.
After Wolfe had died on the field of battle, and Monckton had been
disabled by his wounds, Townshend took command, received the surrender
of Quebec on the 18th, and waited till the French field army had retired
towards Montreal. Then he sailed home with Saunders, leaving Murray
to hold what Wolfe had won. Saunders left Lord Colville in charge of a
strong squadron, with orders to wait at Halifax till the spring.
Both French and British spent a terrible winter. The French had better
shelter in Montreal than the British had among the ruins of Quebec; and,
being more accustomed to the rigours of the climate, they would have
suffered less from cold in any case. But their lot was, on the whole,
the harder of the two; for food was particularly bad and scarce in
Montreal, where even horseflesh was thought a luxury. Both armies were
ravaged by disease to a most alarming extent. Of the eight thousand men
with whom Murray began that deadly winter not one-half were able to bear
arms in the spring; and not one-half of those who did bear arms then
were really fit for duty.
Montcalm's successor, Levis, now made a skilful, bold, and gallant
attempt to retake Quebec before navigation opened. Calling the whole
remaining strength of New France to his aid, he took his army down in
April, mostly by way of the St Lawrence. The weather was stormy. The
banks of the river were lined with rotting ice. The roads were almost
impassable. Yet, after a journey of less than ten days, the whole French
army appeared before Quebec. Murray was at once confronted by a dire
dilemma. The landward defences had never been strong; and he had not
been able to do more than patch them up. If he remained behind them
Levis would close in, batter them down, and probably carry them by
assault against a sickly garrison depressed by being kept within the
walls. If, on the other hand, he marched out, he would have to meet more
than double numbers at the least; for some men would have to be left to
cover a retreat; and he knew the French grand total was nearly thrice
his own. But he chose this bolder course; and at the chill dawn of April
28, he paraded his little attacking force of a bare three thousand men
on the freezing snow and mud of the Esplanade and then marched out.
The two armies met at Ste Foy, a mile and a half beyond the walls; and a
desperate battle ensued. The French had twice as many men in action, but
only half of these were regulars; the others had no bayonets; and there
was no effective artillery to keep down the fire of Murray's commanding
guns. The terrific fight went on for hours, while victory inclined
neither to one side nor the other. It was a far more stubborn and much
bloodier contest than Wolfe's of the year before. At last a British
battalion was fairly caught in flank by overwhelming numbers and
driven across the front of Murray's guns, whose protecting fire it thus
completely masked at a most critical time. Murray thereupon ordered
up his last reserve. But even so he could no longer stand his ground.
Slowly and sullenly his exhausted men fell back before the French, who
put the very last ounce of their own failing strength into a charge that
took the guns. Then the beaten British staggered in behind their walls,
while the victorious French stood fast, worn out by the hardships of
their march and fought to a standstill in the battle.
Levis rallied his army for one more effort and pressed the siege to the
uttermost of his power. Murray had lost a thousand men and could now
muster less than three thousand. Each side prepared to fight the other
to the death. But both knew that the result would depend on the fleets.
There had been no news from Europe since navigation closed; and hopes
ran high among the besiegers that perhaps some friendly men-of-war
might still be first; when of course Quebec would have to surrender
at discretion, and Canada would certainly be saved for France if the
half-expected peace would only follow soon.
Day after day all eyes, both French and British, looked seaward from the
heights and walls; though fleets had never yet been known to come up
the St Lawrence so early in the season. At last, on May 9, the tops of
a man-of-war were sighted just beyond the Point of Levy. Either she or
Quebec, or both, might have false colours flying. So neither besiegers
nor besieged knew to which side she belonged. Nor did she know herself
whether Quebec was French or British. Slowly she rounded into the
harbour, her crew at quarters, her decks all cleared for action. She
saluted with twenty-one guns and swung out her captain's barge. Then,
for the first time, every one watching knew what she was; for the barge
was heading straight in towards the town, and redcoats and bluejackets
could see each other plainly. In a moment every British soldier who
could stand had climbed the nearest wall and was cheering her to the
echo; while the gunners showed their delight by loading and firing as
fast as possible and making all the noise they could.
But one ship was not enough to turn the scale; and Levis redoubled his
efforts. On the night of the 15th French hopes suddenly flared up all
through the camp when the word flew round that three strange men-of-war
just reported down off Beauport were the vanguard of a great French
fleet. But daylight showed them to be British, and British bent on
immediate and vigorous attack. Two of these frigates made straight
for the French flotilla, which fled in wild confusion, covered by the
undaunted Vauquelin in the _Atalante_, which fought a gallant rearguard
action all the twenty miles to Pointe-aux-Trembles, where she was driven
ashore and forced to strike her colours, after another, and still more
desperate, resistance of over two hours. That night Levis raised the
siege in despair and retired on Montreal. Next morning Lord Colville
arrived with the main body of the fleet, having made the earliest ascent
of the St Lawrence ever known to naval history, before that time or
since.
Then came the final scene of all this moving drama. Step by step
overpowering British forces closed in on the doomed and dwindling army
of New France. They closed in from east and west and south, each one of
their converging columns more than a match for all that was left of the
French. Whichever way he looked, Levis could see no loophole of escape.
There was nothing but certain defeat in front and on both flanks, and
starvation in the rear. So when the advancing British met, all together,
at the island of Montreal, he and his faithful regulars laid down their
arms without dishonour, in the fully justifiable belief that no further
use of them could possibly retrieve the great lost cause of France in
Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Wolfe is one of the great heroes in countless books of modern British
history, by far the greatest hero in the many books about the fight
for Canada, and the single hero of four biographies. It was more than a
century after his triumphant death before the first of these appeared:
_The Life of Major-General James Wolfe_ by Robert Wright. A second Life
of Wolfe appeared a generation later, this time in the form of a small
volume by A. G. Bradley in the 'English Men of Action' series. The
third and fourth biographies were both published in 1909, the year
which marked the third jubilee of the Battle of the Plains. One of them,
Edward Salmon's _General Wolfe_, devotes more than the usual perfunctory
attention to the important influence of sea-power; but it is a sketch
rather than a complete biography, and it is by no means free from error.
The other is _The Life and Letters of James Wolfe_ by Beckles Willson.
The histories written with the best knowledge of Wolfe's career in
Canada are: the contemporary _Journal of the Campaigns In North America_
by Captain John Knox, Parkman's _Montcalm and Wolfe_, and _The Siege of
Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham_ by A. G. Doughty and G.
W. Parmelee. Knox's two very scarce quarto volumes have been edited
by A. G. Doughty for the Champlain Society for republication in 1914.
Parkman's work is always excellent. But he wrote before seeing some of
the evidence so admirably revealed in Dr Doughty's six volumes, and,
like the rest, he failed to understand the real value of the fleet.
END