Even the holy sisters came under the spell of the joyous life in which they moved; and one of the Ursuline nuns who came to Quebec with Madame de la Peltrie, thus writes in 1640:—

"Although confined in a small hole, with insufficient air, yet we continue in good health. If in France one eat only bacon and salt fish, as we do here, one might be ill without a word said; but we are well, and sing better than in France. The air is excellent, and this is a terrestrial paradise, where the difficulties and troubles of life come so lovingly, that the more one is piqued, the more one's heart is filled with amiability."

Behind all this gaiety, however, brooded the Church; for even in her lightest moments Quebec never strained far on her sacred leash. From its foundation as a mission trading-post to its consecration as an episcopal see, the rock city remained a fortress of the faith. Its early governors, Champlain, D'Ailleboust, and Montmagny, were monks military, dividing their services equally between faith and fatherland. First the Recollets, then the Jesuits, came into spiritual possession; and later on, episcopal rule succeeded to the influence of Loyola's disciples. The relative estimation in which these various orders of the Church were held being illustrated by a Canadian proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, il faut un pinceau."



Thus, and in spite of resistance from D'Argenson, D'Avaugour, and Frontenac, Quebec had been held fast under a firm ecclesiastical control. Alternating penance with persuasion, the priests imposed their will upon the people. Absence from church and confession brought its sufficient penalty; and the calendar was filled with special days for prayer and purification. Priests, monks, and nuns crowded the city, in numbers disproportionate to the lay population. The place was heavy with the incense of a constant worship—the very atmosphere redolent of piety. From the unrestrained hands of the early governors, the administration of justice passed to the Conseil Superieur, a body comprising the governor, the bishop, the intendant, and a varying number of councillors. Their code took special account of offences against religion, sins for which the bishop was careful to exact proper expiation. The pillory, the stocks, and a certain wooden horse with a sharp spine were the ready instruments of correction. Proclamations were made either from the pulpit or read at the church-door after Mass. Royal edicts and ordinances of the Conseil Superieur prescribed the duties of citizens, and stated without vagueness the penalties which would overtake breakers of the law. Yet in spite of this apparent harshness, the laws were administered in so patriarchal a spirit as to justify the observation: "It requires great interest for a man to be hung in Canada."

The peasants, moreover, were far from rebelling against the impositions of their seigneurs, which they took as part of the order of nature; and General Murray, writing after the Conquest, thus bears testimony to the feeling of good-fellowship prevailing between the two classes: "The tenants, who pay only an annual quit-rent of about a dollar a year for about a hundred acres, are at their ease and comfortable. They have been accustomed to respect and obey their noblesse; their tenures being military in the feudal manner, they have shared with them the dangers of the field, and natural affection has been increased in proportion to the calamities which have been common to both, from the conquest of the country. As they have been taught to respect their superiors, and are not yet intoxicated with the abuse of liberty, they are shocked at the insults which their noblesse and the King's officers have received from the English traders and lawyers since the civil government took place."



Each householder was responsible for the street before his property, being compelled to keep it clean of snow and refuse. Innkeepers required a license, and had to conform to rigid laws. Cattle, pigs, and sheep were impounded if found straying in the streets, and the Intendant strictly regulated the possession of live-stock.

The first horse seen in New France had been brought out by the Governor Montmagny about 1636; but before the end of the century many more were shipped from Havre, and it was not long before the law began to regulate this new feature of social life. An ordinance forbade any habitant to possess more than two mares and one colt. In riding away from service on Sunday the horseman was forbidden to break into a canter until he had travelled ten arpents from the church. Private baptism of children was refused except in cases of absolute necessity. The order in which the personages of Quebec should receive the sacrament was precisely established. Roads, bridges, and churches were built by forced labour. The construction of houses, both as to material and design, was regulated by law. Builders were required to conform to a line and face their houses on the highway. Certain personages, however, claimed exemption from this rule, and to these was accorded the right—d'avoir pignon sur rue—to have the gable on the street, the purpose being to secure a certain degree of privacy by means of an entrance away from the public highway.



As to the law of inheritance, the testator was bound to divide his estate fairly among all his children, the title and the largest share going to the eldest son. This legislation, which affected seigneur and censitaire alike, subdivided the country into ribbon-like farms, with narrow frontages on the river and running back long distances inland. This attenuated appearance of the rural holdings strikes the stranger forcibly as he travels through the province of Quebec even at this day, and denotes a condition which prevailed in England also in the most primitive days of agriculture. The system had some justification, however, in the necessity which each peasant felt of having access to the St. Lawrence, the most convenient, and, for nearly a hundred years, the only highway to the city of Quebec. Moreover, it enabled the settlers to build their houses close together, thus protecting themselves against the ever-present danger of Indian raids. Even now the river St. Lawrence looks like a gigantic road bordered by homely white-washed cottages.

Examples of the quaint laws and customs of the ancien regime might be multiplied indefinitely; but perhaps enough has already been said to show the paternalism of the legal system and the medievalism of the social life which prevailed. Before the Conquest the French Canadian had nothing whatever to do with the making of his own laws; and so far from struggling to obtain this right, he preferred to be without it. The Cure knew all about the laws, and the habitant was willing to leave the matter to him!

On the whole, if we except the wicked exactions of the Intendant Bigot and his confederates, Quebec was happily governed. From generation to generation the light-hearted habitant cheerfully paid his dime to the Church, his cens et rente to the Seigneur, his military service to the Governor. If the call came for a raid upon New England, he took down his musket and his powder-horn, and set out blithely upon his snow-shoes for the rendezvous of war; if to rally to the defence of Quebec, he was equally ready to bury his chattels and take his place upon the city ramparts, or to withstand a landing on the Beauport shore.

Such were the people who drew from the first British Governor a generous testimony: "I glory," says General Murray, "in having been accused of warmth and firmness in protecting the King's Canadian subjects, and of doing the utmost in my power to gain to my royal master the affections of that brave, hardy people, whose emigration, if it should ever happen, would be an irreparable loss to this empire."



So sped life beside the broad St. Lawrence, within and around Quebec. So flew the days of the ancien regime; some sunshine, some shadow, and always an honest fearless people who served God, honoured the King, and stood ready to die for New France and the golden lilies.



CHAPTER XIII

DURING THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR

Realising that even a nominal peace could no longer be maintained, England threw down the gauntlet in the spring of 1756 by formally declaring war. Three weeks later France responded to the challenge, and presently the four corners of the earth were shaken by the most terrible conflict of the century. England's alliance with Prussia drew Austria and Russia into the war on the other side; and notwithstanding the smallness of his kingdom, the military genius of Frederick the Great was able to hold the three proudest powers of Europe at bay, while Clive and Wolfe smote off the heads of the triple alliance in India and North America. The history of Quebec is concerned with only the latter campaign.

The Marquis de Montcalm, the newly appointed commander of the forces in Canada, arrived about the middle of May, bringing with him the Chevalier de Levis, Bourlamaque, and Bougainville, all of them better generals than those to whom the fatuous Duke of Newcastle entrusted the leadership of the English army. Montcalm himself is indeed one of the most heroic and gallant figures in French Canadian history—the personage, par excellence, of the closing chapter of French dominion.

Born at his father's chateau in Candiac in 1712, he inherited all the martial impetuosity of the southern noblesse. At fifteen he was an ensign in the regiment of Hainaut, at seventeen a captain; and, in the campaigns of Bohemia and Italy, his conspicuous valour won him quick promotion. At forty-four he was a General, commanding the troops of Louis XV. in New France. In appearance he was under middle height, slender, and graceful in movement. Keen clear eyes lighted up a handsome face, and wit sparkled upon his lips.

The Governor, Vaudreuil, son of a former ruler, was a Canadian by birth, and accordingly prejudiced against officers who came from France. A veiled antagonism springing up between himself and Montcalm was a source of weakness to the French cause in America, and darkened the closing struggle of the devoted French Canadians to keep the land for their mother-country.

Montcalm on his arrival at once took stock, so to speak, of his command. His two battalions of La Sarre and Royal Roussillon added about twelve hundred men to the troops of the line already in New France. These, it will be remembered, consisted of the battalions of Artois and Bourgogne,—now the garrison at Louisbourg,—and the battalions of La Reine, Languedoc, Guienne, and Bearn, numbering in all about three thousand men. Besides these, about two thousand troupes de la marine constituted the permanent military establishment. Last of all came the militia, nominally made up of all the male inhabitants of Canada between the ages of sixteen and sixty, but rarely mustering more than two thousand men. Such was the soldiery in New France under Montcalm; and to them were added the Indian allies, whose numbers rose or fell with the fortune of war.

Against a Canadian population of less than seventy thousand, the English colonies could count more than a million souls; and although they lacked cohesion, and, indeed, regular military establishment of any kind, their greater wealth and numbers fore-told the inevitable result of the struggle. At first the tide of war set against the English: an event to be expected with Newcastle guiding the ship of state, and believing in his generals, Loudon, Webb, and Abercrombie, vain and obtuse military martinets, who fumbled their opportunities, mismanaged their campaigns, and learned no lessons from their failures.

From Oswego, on the south-east corner of Lake Ontario, the English had planned to attack Fort Frontenac and Fort Niagara, so cutting off New France from her western outposts. But Montcalm, with the speed and energy that marked his character, determined to act upon the offensive. With three thousand men he hurried to Fort Frontenac, and crossed the lake under cover of the night. In the morning the garrison of Oswego found themselves besieged. The cannonade on both sides was brief but vigorous; but the French fought with greater spirit, their dash and resource were disconcerting, and presently this, the most important English stronghold of the west, was compelled to capitulate. Sixteen hundred prisoners, a hundred pieces of artillery, and a vast quantity of stores and ammunition fell into the hands of the triumphant French. Having thus secured the west, Montcalm hurried back to Lake Champlain, and intrenched himself at Carillon, by this means to prevent an invasion of Canada by way of the Richelieu. Owing to the lateness of the season, however, his opponents undertook no new expedition that year, and waited for the spring.

In 1757 Loudon conceived the idea of attacking Louisbourg, and accordingly he withdrew his troops to Halifax in order to co-operate with an English squadron under Admiral Holbourne. Loudon's incompetency alone would have fore-doomed so hazardous an undertaking; but once more the elements fought on the side of France, and Holbourne's fleet was shattered by a storm.

So far Montcalm had maintained a defensive attitude in the Richelieu valley, but taking advantage of Loudon's diversion towards Louisbourg, he now resolved upon attacking Fort William Henry, strongly held by over two thousand English troops. Moving out of his intrenchments at Carillon, therefore, and supported by Levis and Bougainville, he advanced up the valley with six thousand soldiers and over a thousand Indians. Monro, the British commandant, sharply rejected the summons to surrender, and Montcalm began the investment of the fort.

Fourteen miles away, General Webb lay encamped at Fort Edward with twenty-six hundred men, and to him Monro sent for assistance. But the timorous Webb had no stomach for a fight. Huddling behind his breastworks, he listened to the booming of the fierce cannonade across the hills, but made no move to save Fort William Henry. Monro, seeing himself thus abandoned, his powder gone, his ramparts and bastions shattered by Montcalm's heavy artillery, at length asked for terms. Surrendering their arms, the garrison marched out with the honours of war, drums beating; but they also marched into one of the most shameful disasters recorded in American history.



Frenzied by the protracted siege, and burning with vengeance for their slain in the trenches, the savage allies of the French burst all restraint and fell upon the disarmed garrison. In vain Montcalm, Levis, and Bourlamaque begged, threatened, and even interposed their own bodies to prevent a massacre. Defenceless men, women, and children were tomahawked in cold blood, or reserved for more leisurely torment. Some of the poor fugitives, fleeing at the first war-whoop, reached Fort Edward through the woods. Four hundred of the captives were eventually rescued by the French, while the Indians, decamping after their carnival of blood, carried two hundred wretched victims back to their lodges. Then followed the work of demolishing Fort William Henry, and soon its blazing ruins, a funeral pyre for the slaughtered garrison, lit up the summer night, and cast a lurid flame soon to kindle the avenging wrath of England.

To these ill-boding events, moreover, the loss of Minorca was now added, until England at last refused to endure longer the incapacity of Newcastle, and clamoured for the appointment of Pitt. "England has long been in labour," commented Frederick of Prussia, "and at last she has brought forth a man." From that moment the fortune of war was changed. Corruption and divided counsels no longer paralysed the government, and the Great Commoner, healthy minded, rugged, and enthusiastic, now stood to middle-class England as an embodiment of strength and purpose, which sent new blood coursing through her veins and braced her for the gathering storm.

To America, where the clouds were darkest, Pitt first turned his attention. Louisbourg, Carillon, Duquesne, and Quebec must be brought low, if, as was his purpose, French power was not only to be crushed but absolutely destroyed. And towards this goal Pitt moved swiftly at the head of a nation as resolute as himself. Loudon and Webb were instantly recalled, and Amherst, Wolfe, and Howe were appointed in their places, the last being ordered to second Abercrombie, whom Pitt had reluctantly retained in his command.

The years since 1745 had been years of growing strength for Louisbourg, and in 1758 it almost equalled Quebec itself in importance. Its capable commandant, the Chevalier de Drucour, counted four thousand citizens and three thousand men-at-arms for his garrison; while twelve battleships, mounting five hundred and forty-four guns, and manned by three thousand sailors and marines, rode at anchor in the rock-girt harbour, the fortress itself, with its formidable outworks, containing two hundred and nineteen cannon and seventeen mortars. Bold men only could essay the capture of such a fortress, but such were Wolfe, Amherst, and Admiral Boscawen, whose work it was to do.

The fleet and transports sailed from Halifax, bearing eleven thousand six hundred men full of spirit and faith in their commanders. All accessible landing-places at Louisbourg had been fortified by the French; but in spite of this precaution and a heavy surf, Wolfe's division gained the beach and carried the redoubts at Freshwater Cove. A general landing having been thus effected, Wolfe marched round the flank of the fortress to establish a battery at Light-house Point. The story may only be outlined here. First the French were forced to abandon Grand Battery, which frowned over the harbour, then the Island Battery was silenced. On the forty-third day of the siege, a frigate in the harbour was fired by shells, and drifting from her moorings, destroyed two sister ships. Four vessels which had been sunk at the mouth of the harbour warded Boscawen's fleet from the assault, but did not prevent six hundred daring blue-jackets from seizing the Prudent and Bienfaisant, the two remaining ships of the French squadron.

Meanwhile, zigzag trenches crept closer and closer to the walls, upon which the heavy artillery now played at short range with deadly effect. Bombs and grenades hissed over the shattering ramparts and burst in the crowded streets; roundshot and grape tore their way through the wooden barracks; while mortars and musketry poured a hail of shell and bullet upon the brave defenders. Nothing could save Louisbourg now that Pitt's policy of Thorough had got headway. On the 26th of July a white flag fluttered over the Dauphin's Bastion; and by midnight of that date Drucour had signed Amherst's terms enjoining unconditional surrender.

Then the work of demolition commenced. The mighty fortress, which had cast a dark shadow over New England for almost half a century, "the Dunkirk of America," must stand no longer as a menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth without a sigh for the buried valour of bygone years!

In the Richelieu valley, meanwhile, the armies of England and France had met in even fiercer conflict. Montcalm lay intrenched at Carillon at the head of the battalions of La Sarre, Languedoc, Berry, Royal Roussillon, La Reine, Bearn, and Guienne, three thousand six hundred men in all. To this high rocky battlement overlooking Lake Champlain, the French had hastily added a rugged outwork of felled trees on the crest of a flanking hill. The ridge thus fortified now looked down upon a valley stripped of its timber, but covered with rugged stumps and a maze of stakes and branches, which, while affording no cover for an enemy, presented insuperable obstacles to his advance.

On came Abercrombie at the head of fifteen thousand men, offering the most imposing military spectacle yet seen in the New World. They advanced in three divisions—the regulars in the centre, commanded by the gallant Lord Howe, and a blue column of provincials on either flank. To the martial music of their bands or the shrill notes of the bagpipe they gaily marched through the midsummer woods, the Forty-Second Highlanders in the van.

As the army drew near to the French position, Lord Howe pressed forward to reconnoitre the approaches. This young nobleman, although but thirty-four years of age, had already reached the top of his profession. Keen and daring, with a hand of steel in a glove of velvet, and a magnetism that charmed the regular and the provincial alike, Lord Howe had become the soul of Abercrombie's army; and as he fell in this engagement, shot through the breast by a skirmisher's bullet, that army at once declined to its ruin.

Notwithstanding this loss, Abercrombie swept on along the Indian trail; and when Montcalm looked down from the rough ramparts of Carillon upon that splendid pageant, all hope of saving his stronghold was banished. All hope save one. The indiscretion of the English General might lead him to decide upon assault instead of siege. The inept Abercrombie did not disappoint him—Carillon was to be taken at the point of the bayonet!

All day long the fearless battalions of Old and New England hurled themselves against the fatal breastwork; all day long those steady columns of British infantry, headed by Campbell's Highlanders, brilliantly valiant, pressed up the rough glacis under a cross-fire which swept them front and flank. At night two thousand of Abercrombie's stubborn soldiery lay dead upon the field. Their splendid valour had been all in vain against the invisible musketeers of Montcalm, Levis, and Bourlamaque.

Among the slain was the brave Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, of whom Parkman relates the following legend:—

"The ancient castle of Inverawe stands by the banks of the Awe, in the midst of the wild and picturesque scenery of the Western Highlands. Late one evening, before the middle of the eighteenth century, as the laird, Duncan Campbell, sat alone in the hall, there was a loud knocking at the gate; and opening it, he saw a stranger, with torn clothing and kilt besmeared with blood, who, in a breathless voice, begged for asylum. He went on to say that he had killed a man in a fray, and that the pursuers were at his heels. Campbell promised to shelter him. 'Swear on your dirk!' said the stranger; and Campbell swore. He then led him to a secret recess in the depths of the castle.

"Scarcely was he hidden when again there was a loud knocking at the gate, and two armed men appeared. 'Your cousin Donald has been murdered, and we are looking for the murderer!'

"Campbell, remembering his oath, professed to have no knowledge of the fugitive; and the men went on their way.

"The laird, in great agitation, lay down to rest in a large dark room, when at length he fell asleep. Waking suddenly in bewilderment and terror, he saw the ghost of the murdered Donald standing by his bedside, and heard a hollow voice pronounce the words: 'Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the murderer!'

"In the morning, Campbell went to the hiding-place of the guilty man, and told him that he could harbour him no longer. 'You have sworn on your dirk!' he replied; and the laird of Inverawe, greatly perplexed and troubled, made a compromise between conflicting duties, promised not to betray his guest, led him to the neighbouring mountain, and hid him in a cave.

"In the next night, as he lay tossing in feverish slumbers, the same stern voice awoke him, the ghost of his cousin Donald stood again at his bedside, and again he heard the same appalling words: 'Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the murderer!' At the break of day he hastened, in strange agitation, to the cave; but it was empty, the stranger was gone. At night, as he strove in vain to sleep, the vision appeared once more, ghastly pale, but less stern of aspect than before. 'Farewell, Inverawe!' it said; 'farewell, till we meet at Ticonderoga!'[28]

"The strange man dwelt in Campbell's memory. He had joined the Black Watch, or Forty-Second Regiment, then employed in keeping order in the turbulent Highlands. In time he became its major; and a year or two after the war broke out he went with it to America. Here, to his horror, he learned that it was ordered to the attack of Ticonderoga. His story was well known among his brother officers. They combined among themselves to disarm his fears; and when they reached the fatal spot they told him on the eve of the battle, 'This is not Ticonderoga; we are not there yet; this is Fort George,' But in the morning he came to them with haggard looks. 'I have seen him! You have deceived me! He came to my tent last night! This is Ticonderoga! I shall die to-day!'

"And his prediction was fulfilled."[29]

[Footnote 28: Ticonderoga, the Indian name for the fort of Carillon.]

[Footnote 29: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii., Appendix.]

However magnificent was the triumph of the French arms at Carillon, it could not balance the loss of Louisbourg; and before the summer of 1758 had ended, the heart of Quebec was wrung with news of further disasters. Crossing Lake Ontario with a force of three thousand colonials, Colonel Bradstreet appeared suddenly before Fort Frontenac. In spite of the abundant store of furs, ammunition, and implements of war which the lake fort contained, its garrison had been hopelessly weakened to supply troops for the Richelieu district, and when surprised by Bradstreet it consisted of but one hundred and ten soldiers. Without firing a shot, the commandant, De Noyan, surrendered the position.

This blow cut New France into halves, severing the western forts from their base of supplies, and effectually destroying what remained of French influence over the wavering Indian tribes. Meanwhile, General Forbes, with six thousand men, was marching from Philadelphia to attack Fort Duquesne. After three months of hardship he arrived at the junction of the Ohio and Monongahela; but the commandant De Ligneris had not awaited his coming, and the fort now lay in ashes, having been destroyed by its own garrison when it became clear that succour could no longer be expected from Quebec.

Quebec itself, though up to this time beyond the range of actual war, was in the usual throes of civil discord. If Vaudreuil, the Governor, had previously been jealous of Montcalm, the recent success achieved by the latter at Carillon now doubled his resentment. Casting about for any conceivable point of criticism, Vaudreuil blamed the General for not turning Abercrombie's retreat into a rout. Regarding this inspiration, Montcalm writes to Bourlamaque: "I ended by saying quietly 'that when I went to war I did the best I could; and that when one is not pleased with one's lieutenants, one had better take the field in person.' He was very much moved, and muttered between his teeth that perhaps he would; at which I said that I should be delighted to serve under him. Madame de Vaudreuil wanted to put in her word. I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honour to say that ladies ought not to talk war.' She kept on. I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honour to say that if Madame de Montcalm were here, and heard me talking war with Monsieur le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would remain silent.'"

Thus the cloaked strife between the General and the so-called Canadian party proceeded. Vaudreuil wrote earnestly to the Court to have Montcalm recalled; while Montcalm, who was not blind to the malversations of Bigot and his clique, made this matter the burden of some of his official letters. The result was a rebuke administered to Vaudreuil and the Intendant, which further heated their feeling against Montcalm. Bougainville was despatched to France to lay an account of the dire distress of Canada before the Court. Montcalm's letters highly commended the envoy, but Vaudreuil as promptly described him as a creature of the General, and their quarrel did not help New France at the Royal Court. Berryer, the Colonial Minister, received Bougainville coldly, and to his appeal for help replied: "Eh, Monsieur, when the house is on fire one cannot concern one's self with the stable." But the Canadian envoy responded, with caustic wit, "At least, Monsieur, nobody will say that you talk like a horse."

Berryer's remark, however, exactly described the state of affairs. Worsted by Clive at Plassey, and by Frederick the Great at Leuthen and Rossbach, even the loss of Louisbourg, the Forts Duquesne and Frontenac, could hardly add to France's cup of bitterness, and to save herself in Europe she was prepared for sacrifice in America. Within the single twelvemonth during which Pitt had been at the helm of England, France had altered her pretentious claim upon almost the whole of North America to the extremely reasonable demand for a foothold on the river St. Lawrence. Even this last claim was now assailed; and as she fell back into her last intrenchments, the armies of England advanced to the final encounter.



The general hopelessness of the situation in Canada is reflected in a letter written by the Minister of War, M. de Belleisle, to Montcalm, under the date 19th February, 1759: "Besides increasing the dearth of provisions, it is to be feared that reinforcements, if despatched, would fall into the power of the English. The King is unable to send succours proportional to the force the English can place in the field to oppose you....You must confine yourself to the defensive, and concentrate all your forces within as narrow limits as possible. It is of the last importance to preserve some footing in Canada. However small the territory preserved may be, it is indispensable that un pied should be retained in North America, for if all be once lost it would become impossible to recover it."

And Montcalm wrote in reply: "For my part, and that of the troops under me, we are ready to fall with the colony, and to be buried in its ruins." And later: "If we are left without a fleet at Quebec, the enemy can come there; and Quebec taken, the colony is lost....If the war continues, Canada will belong to the English in course of this campaign or the next. If peace be made, the colony is lost unless there be a total change of management." Levis bore similar testimony to the discouragement caused to the colonials by the indifferent attitude of the Government of France. "I see," he wrote, "that it is necessary to defend ourselves foot by foot, fighting to the death; for it will be better for the King's service that we should die with arms in our hands than for us to accept disgraceful terms of surrender like those permitted at the capitulation of Cape Breton."

The plan of the campaign of 1759 embraced simultaneous attacks upon Quebec and Montreal. The former was entrusted to Wolfe and Admiral Saunders, and the latter to Amherst. The French, on their part, disposed their troops entirely upon the defensive, Montcalm and Vaudreuil, commanders of the regulars and the militia, concentrating their soldiers round Quebec; while Bourlamaque, with less than four thousand men, was despatched to hold the gateway of the Richelieu against Amherst.

Bourlamaque first took up his position at Carillon, but on the approach of the English he blew up the walls of his fortress and retired to Crown Point. Meanwhile the deliberate Amherst marched slowly forward, building forts as he went, in this mistaken zeal for military efficiency defeating the purpose of Pitt, which was, to make a strong diversion for covering Wolfe's movement upon the St. Lawrence. It was August before he arrived at Crown Point. This fortress, however, the wily Bourlamaque had previously abandoned for the stronger position of Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain.

Even then Amherst refrained from hurrying forward to overwhelm the French with his superior numbers; and when at length autumn came, he was still advancing cautiously from Crown Point. But Wolfe no longer needed his help.



CHAPTER XIV

"HERE DIED WOLFE VICTORIOUS"

In spite of her strong position, Quebec did not await the arrival of the enemy with folded hands. Since 1720 walls and bastions of grey stone had completely girded the city, but within that time no invasion had tested its strength. Even now, in the midst of the most desperate war the New World had ever known, Vaudreuil loudly proclaimed that the fortress was impregnable; and his letters, promising annihilation to his foolhardy foes, are painful gasconade. Yet with all this show of assurance, he was careful to send through the parishes, calling out to service every available man, and in some cases boys of thirteen and fourteen years of age; while the women and children, hiding the household valuables, withdrew from the river to places of safety.

A council of war had in the meantime decided to place the city under cover of an intrenched camp, which Montcalm was at first in favour of locating on the Plains of Abraham; but in view of the fact that the bastions of the citadel and the batteries erected on the quays of Lower Town were already in full command of the river, another site was finally selected. Assuming that the enemy could never force his way up the river past the city batteries, he concluded that the enemy must land by way of the lowlands below the town; and Wolfe himself had a like opinion until long after the investment had begun.

Since spring, when the proclamation of Vaudreuil had been read at the doors of the country churches, a constant stream of men and boys had been flowing towards Quebec; and by the middle of June Montcalm found himself in command of more than sixteen thousand men, including regulars, militia, and Indians. The mouth of the St. Charles had been closed with a heavy boom of logs, in front of which was moored a floating battery mounting five cannon; and behind it two stranded hulks, armed with heavy ordnance, were able to sweep the Bay. From this point to the height where, seven miles away, the Montmorency leaped foaming over its dizzy precipice, the lowlands of Beauport had been strongly fortified and intrenched. Redoubts had been erected at all possible landing-places; and behind these vast earthworks which followed the curving shore, the Canadian forces lay securely encamped. The right wing, composed of the militia regiments of Quebec and Three Rivers, under M. de Saint-Ours and M. de Bonne, took up its position facing the city on the flats known as La Canardiere; the centre, stretching from the St. Charles to the Beauport river, consisted of two thousand regulars under Brigadier Senezergues; and the left, including the Montreal militia, held the road from the Beauport to the Montmorency. Montcalm established his headquarters in the centre, wisely entrusting the left wing to the capable De Levis, the right being assigned to Bougainville.



Within the walls, the Chevalier de Ramezay commanded a garrison of above a thousand men. Every gate but one had been closed and barricaded, the Porte du Palais being left open to afford communication between the city and the camp by way of a bridge of boats across the St. Charles. Vaudreuil transferred the seat of government to Beauport, taking up his quarters at the centre with Montcalm; and those of the citizens who were not required to man the ramparts removed themselves and their valuables for safety to the country. Quebec was armed to the teeth. Three hundred feet above the river rose the battery of the citadel; on a lower level the Castle Battery frowned over towards Point Levi, the Grand Battery commanding the harbour; while, on the wharves of Lower Town, the Queen's, Dauphin's, and Royal batteries were able to sweep the narrows. Even though the English fleet might run this gauntlet of heavy ordnance, the high cliffs for miles above the city remained practically inaccessible, and at almost any point a hundred resolute men would suffice to beat back an army. In the face of these preparations, it seemed an act of madness to attempt the reduction of Quebec. But within defences so secure the ardent spirits of the Canadian troops were chafing at enforced inaction; for although diligently exercised by their commanders, they still had leisure to think of the homes they loved, where the corn would never be garnered.

On the English side Captain Cook, as his biographer relates, "was employed to procure accurate soundings of the channel between the Island of Orleans and the shore of Beauport—a service of great danger, which could only be performed in the night-time. He had scarcely finished when he was discovered, and a number of Indians in canoes started to cut him off. The pursuit was so close that they jumped in at the boat's stern as Cook leaped out to gain the protection of the English sentinel. The boat was carried off by the Indians. Cook, however, furnished the admiral with as correct a draft of the channel and soundings as could afterwards have been made when the English were in peaceable possession of Quebec."



At length, towards the end of June, the invading ships sailed up the channel south of the Isle of Orleans; twenty ships of the line, twenty frigates, and a swarm of transports, bearing in all about nine thousand men. But Quebec, so often threatened in the past, and ever fortunate in resistance, gazed complacently down upon this imposing fleet. Montcalm feared but one contingency, the co-operation of Amherst with Wolfe from the west; and this, as we have seen, was a needless anxiety. Disembarking, Wolfe pitched his camp at the western end of the Isle of Orleans, four miles from Quebec. Before him rose the portentous batteries of the city, and, on his right, the long battle-line of Montcalm flaunted a desperate challenge. Remembering, however, that defences stronger still had been carried at Louisbourg, the English General confidently drew up his plans.



The only vantage-ground left unoccupied by the French was the Heights of Levi, opposite the city, Montcalm having thought it unwise to isolate there any portion of his force. Thither, accordingly, Monckton's brigade was now despatched; and English batteries, rising darkly on the high cliffs, were soon directing across the narrow channel of the river that hail of shot which, within a month, had left the Lower Town a heap of ashes, and dropped destruction upon the crowded summit of the citadel. So galling grew this fire, that at last a force was sent to destroy the English camp; and on the night of July the 12th, fifteen hundred soldiers and Indians stole silently from Sillery across the river. But as they picked their way through the dark woods, trembling with the excitement of a dangerous adventure, a sudden panic seized them, and in the confusion, the students of the Seminary, who formed part of the column, opened fire upon their own men. Discipline and order were at once discarded, and the whole party rushed back in terror to the boats. At dawn they returned from this unhappy and futile expedition, bringing new terrors to their fellow-citizens, who nicknamed this bloodless effort the "Scholars' Battle"; and Quebec again endured the misery of ceaseless bombardment.

With strange fatuity the French employed another device to destroy the fleet of the invaders and carry terror into their ranks. A flotilla of fire-ships was loaded to the gunwale with pitch, tar, powder bombs, grenades, and scrap-iron; and towards midnight these floating hell-boats slipped their moorings and drifted with the tide towards the English fleet riding at the Point of Orleans. Tide and stream bore them swiftly through the gloom; and at a given signal, fuses were ignited and the crews escaped in boats. Sharp tongues of flame ran along the bulwarks, and the loose powder sputtered and hissed. Then, suddenly, the night was rent by explosion after explosion, reverberating through the canons of the distant Laurentides, and echoing along the river walls beyond Cap Tourmente. A lurid glare lit up the broad harbour, the towers and minarets of the beleaguered city, revealing in red light the full tents of the French army along the Beauport lowlands.

To the English it was "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived"; but the French were in no mood to enjoy its harmless effulgence. The fuses had been lighted half an hour too soon, and before the tide of the north channel carried them to the English fleet, the magnificent flotilla, upon which Quebec had squandered a million livres, had become a squadron of blazing hulks which the British sailors grappled and towed to shore. All night long their impotent fires lit up the Bay, and by sunrise another hope of New France had turned to ashes.

Although the unquenchable batteries of Point Levi continued to pour destruction upon Quebec, Wolfe saw that the defeat of Montcalm must precede the capture of the city; and to this end he now directed his attention. Beyond the rocky gorge of the Montmorency, a high open land seemed to offer a possible avenue of attack upon the French camp across the river, and thither the English General resolved to transfer his main camp. On the night of the 8th of July he embarked with three thousand men—the brigades of Townshend and Murray, a body of grenadiers, light infantry, and the Sixtieth Regiment, or Royal Americans. Before dawn they made a landing at the village of L'Ange Gardien, and gained the heights after a slight skirmish with an irregular body of native militia. Earthworks were hastily thrown up, fascine batteries were erected, and Montcalm's reveille next morning was a heavy cannonade from this new quarter.



Wolfe had now divided his army into three camps, each so far removed from the other that little or no help could be expected in case of separate attack. Yet it was in vain that he tempted Montcalm to battle. For weeks his guns roared challenge across the Montmorency; but the cautious French General only shrugged his shoulders and remarked: "Let him amuse himself where he is. If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm." To discover this vulnerable spot Wolfe would have risked much, as appears from his daring instructions of the 18th of July. On this day the Sutherland and several small frigates ran the gauntlet of the city batteries, and racing through the hail of lead and iron falling from a hundred guns upon the ramparts, they reached Cap Rouge above Quebec.

To the French the impossible had happened. Montcalm, therefore, hastily detailed a small force to defend the cliffs; and the right wing of the army under Bougainville was charged with the protection of the city upon its flank, or landward side. To Wolfe, however, who himself made the hazardous voyage in the Sutherland, the result of the reconnaissance was not cheering. No point upon those rugged cliffs seemed to offer a favourable landing; and he came back to his camp on the Montmorency more than ever convinced that Montcalm's army could be defeated only by a direct assault upon its strong intrenchments. This desperate enterprise he essayed on the last day of July.

When the tide runs out past the Isle of Orleans, it leaves a wide sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs between Beauport and Montmorency, the mouth of the latter river also being hardly more than knee-deep at ebb-tide. Aware of these conditions, the French had erected a strong redoubt at the edge of the strand, and posted a large force of musketeers in the intrenchments capping the heights above it. This was the point which Wolfe selected for attack.

In the morning at high tide the Centurion, of sixty-four guns, took up a position near the Montmorency ford and opened fire upon the French redoubt. During this movement two armed transports detailed to second her cannonade, running too close upon the shore, were stranded with the receding tide. At the same time, the batteries of Wolfe's camp across the river were pounding the enemy's flank. Towards noon five thousand British soldiers pressed towards the point of attack; some in boats from Point Levi and Orleans, some crossing the ford from Townshend's camp. The first to reach the spot were thirteen companies of grenadiers and a detachment of Royal Americans, who having landed from the boats, instead of waiting for Monckton's brigade which was close behind, dashed boldly forward across the strand. The French gave way before their impetuous rush, and abandoned the redoubt at the foot of the hill. Then, suddenly, the crest of the ridge above them blazed with musketry, and the cross-fire from the trenches poured a hail of death upon their panting ranks. Up the terrible glacis they still strove to climb in the face of a splashing downpour of bullets. At that moment the sky became overcast, and from the pall of cloud hanging over Beauport a wild storm of rain broke over the battlefield. It was impossible to scale the slippery rocks, the powder was drenched and useless. Seeing the madness of further attack, Wolfe now sounded a retreat. A force of less than a thousand men had attempted to storm a bristling cliff whose double line of defence consisted of the muskets of Canadian sharpshooters and the bayonets of Bearn, Guienne, and Royal Roussillon; and before the order to retire was given, nearly half their number had fallen in this bootless conflict on the Beauport Flats.

It was now August, and the hopes of Quebec rose higher with the advancing season. So far the English had scored no perceptible success; and although the batteries of Point Levi had laid the Lower Town in ruins, and were still pounding at the high ramparts, the defences of the city remained practically as strong as ever. The steady bombardment, however, was causing much suffering and anxiety to those inhabitants who had been unable to flee from the city; and for two full days the Lower Town was in flames, the large company of sappers and miners, detailed as a fire brigade, being powerless against the conflagration. The walls of Notre Dame des Victoires kept guard upon the poor wreck of its venerated altars, while in the Upper Town the Cathedral tower had been shot away, and the Basilica itself was half a ruin. Some of the rampart batteries were buried beneath the debris of demolished houses, and bursting shells ploughed up the streets; moreover, the wooden palisade, hastily erected in the Quartier du Palais to provide against a possible assault by way of the St. Charles, had been destroyed by fire. At last forsaking the dangerous walls of their exposed convents, the Ursulines and the nuns of Hotel-Dieu sought shelter further afield. The Hospital General, established by Bishop St. Vallier, Laval's successor, on a bend of the St. Charles, being beyond the range of the English artillery, the homeless poor flocked thither for refuge, until the convent and all its dependances were filled to overflowing with miserable refugees. The chapel was pressed into service as a ward for the wounded; and holy Masses were said by special permission in the choeur. During this time of trial Bishop Pontbriand remained in the city, exhorting its defenders to be of good courage and cheering the wounded by his ministrations; while, as if to counteract his influence for good, the more heartless spirits were tempted to robbery and pillage—a shameless addition to the general suffering promptly checked by a gallows in the Place d'Armes.



Provisions had been plentiful enough up to midsummer; but as the siege was prolonged beyond harvest time, and as Wolfe's soldiers were laying the country waste in every direction as far as eye could see, it was no wonder that Montcalm felt some anxiety for the feeding of fifteen thousand troops. Moreover, an unexpected consequence of Wolfe's repulse at Beauport now brought a new anxiety to the French; for British operations were presently begun at a point above the city, to the great peril of its food-supply. Admiral Holmes's division had forced a passage up the river, soon to be joined by twelve hundred men under Brigadier Murray, who had instructions to menace the city upon its flank. Up and down the river this composite squadron cruised, making feints now here, now there, exhausting the energies of Bougainville and his column of fifteen hundred men, who were thus forced to cover an exposed shore for a distance of fifty miles. Murray attempted a landing at Pointe-aux-Trembles, but was beaten back; at La Muletiere he was also unsuccessful; but at Deschambault, forty-one miles above the city, he was able to destroy a large quantity of French stores without the loss of a man. Up to this time the French had conveyed their supplies from Batiscan to St. Augustin by water, and thence overland to Quebec, a distance of thirteen miles. But the presence of Admiral Holmes's squadron rendered this method of transport precarious, and an attempt was made to drive supplies overland from Batiscan; but as this place was sixty-seven miles distant from Quebec, famine laid its hand upon the city before they could arrive. French transports were therefore compelled to run the perilous blockade of the vigilant English fleet.



Meanwhile, upon the report of the slow but successful advance of Amherst in the Richelieu Valley, news had come of the fall of Fort Niagara. New France now retained no vestige of her Western empire. Except for Bourlamaque at Isle-aux-Noix, Montreal had no defence against British attack; and thither, on the ninth of August, Montcalm despatched Levis with eight hundred men. Even though Wolfe had failed to carry the city by assault, the garrison were now thoroughly alarmed at the protracted siege, and prayed for an early winter which must drive the English out of the river. The militia of Montcalm's army were deserting by hundreds, their fortitude breaking down as they saw the sky reddened with the flames of the river parishes, and languished under the strain of short rations.

Montcalm himself felt the pinch of a failing commissariat, but with good-humour he made the best of the position. An example of his whimsical mood and gay fortitude may be found in a menu he presents in a letter to Levis—

"Petits pates de cheval, a l'Espagnole. Cheval a la mode. Escalopes de cheval. Filet de cheval a la brochu avec une poivarde bien liee. Semelles de cheval au gratin."

On the other hand, the English army had its own discouragements. Night after night, Canadian irregulars and Indians crept up to Wolfe's lines to murder and scalp the outposts and sentries. Fever invaded the camp, and, more than all else, the serious illness of the General himself depressed the spirits of his men. Ceaseless anxiety over a hitherto ineffective campaign had played sad havoc with the nervous, high-strung temperament of the English commander; and the grey, inaccessible city still rose grimly to mock his schemes. Only the most invincible spirit could have borne so frail a body through those weeks of hope deferred. A vague melancholy marked the line of his tall ungainly figure; but resolution, courage, endurance, deep design, clear vision, dogged will, and heroism shone forth from those searching eyes, making of no account the incongruities of the sallow features. Straight red hair, a nose thrust out like a wedge, and a chin falling back from an affectionate sort of mouth, made, by an antic of nature, the almost grotesque setting of those twin furnaces of daring resolve, which, in the end, fulfilled the yearning hopes of England.

August had nearly gone, and the gallant General, only thirty-two years of age and already touched by the finger of death, lay sick in a farmhouse at Montmorency. Success seemed even further away than it had been in the early summer. Yet, in consultation with his three brigadiers—Monckton, Townshend, and Murray—Wolfe had decided upon a new and desperate plan.

"I know perfectly well you cannot cure me," he said to the surgeon; "but pray make me up so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty; that is all I want," To Pitt he wrote—and this was his last despatch: "The obstacles we have met with in the operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect, or could foresee; not so much from the number of the enemy (though superior to us), as from the natural strength of the country, which the Marquis de Montcalm seems wisely to depend upon. When I learned that succours of all kinds had been thrown into Quebec—that five battalions of regular troops, completed from the best inhabitants of the country, some of the troops of the colony, and every Canadian that was able to bear arms, besides several nations of savages, had taken the field in a very advantageous situation,—I could not flatter myself that I should be able to reduce the place. I sought, however, an occasion to attack their army, knowing well that with these troops I was able to fight, and hoping that a victory might disperse them....I found myself so ill, and am still so weak, that I begged the general officers to consult together for the general utility. They are all of opinion that, as more ships and provisions are now got above the town, they should try, by conveying up a corps of four or five thousand men (which is nearly the whole strength of the army after the Points of Levi and Orleans are left in a proper state of defence), to draw the enemy from their present situation and bring them to an action. I have acquiesced in the proposal, and we are preparing to put it into execution."

Carrying out this new plan, Wolfe first abandoned his camp at Montmorency, and for the moment concentrated his strength at Levi and Orleans. Then Admiral Holmes's division in the river above the city was strengthened, and on the night of the 4th of September ships and transports, carrying five months' provisions, silently and successfully ran the blockade of the citadel's guns and anchored off Cap Rouge. On the 5th, Murray, Monckton, and Townshend marched seven battalions overland from Point Levi to the mouth of the river Etechemin opposite Sillery Cove; and on the 6th, Wolfe found himself cruising above the town with twenty-two ships and thirty-six hundred men.

Meanwhile, Montcalm and Vaudreuil were greatly perplexed and all unconscious of the new designs and movements of the enemy. The position at the Point of Orleans still seemed to be strongly occupied, for every day Colonel Carleton paraded his men up and down in full view of the camp at Beauport; the batteries at Point Levi thundered with their accustomed vehemence, and Admiral Saunders's division still lay threateningly in the basin below the city. Thus the weakening of these camps by twelve hundred men, who marched up the south shore to join Wolfe, was not perceived by Montcalm. Above Quebec, Bourlamaque was not less perplexed by the mysterious movements of Holmes's squadron and the army transports. Up and down the river they sailed, now threatening to land at Pointe-aux-Trembles, now at Sillery, and greatly confusing the right wing of the French army by their complex movements.

At last the great night came, starlit and serene. The camp-fires of two armies spotted the shores of the wide river, and the ships lay like wild-fowl in coveys above the town. At Beauport, an untiring General of France, who, booted and spurred, through a hundred days had snatched but a broken sleep, in the ebb of a losing game, now longed for his adored Candiac, grieved for a beloved daughter's death, sent cheerful messages to his aged mother and to his wife, and by the deeper protests of his love, foreshadowed his own doom. At Cap Rouge, a dying soldier of England, unperturbed and valiant, reached out a finger to trace the last movement in the desperate campaign of a life that had opened in Flanders at the age of sixteen, now closing as he took from his bosom the portrait of his affianced wife, and said to his old schoolfellow, "Give this to her, Jervis, for we shall meet no more." Then, passing from the deck, silent and steady, no signs of pain upon his face—so had the calm come to him as to nature, and to this beleaguered city, before the whirlwind—he viewed the clustered groups of boats filled with the flower of his army, settled down into a menacing tranquillity. There lay the Light Infantry, Bragg's, Kennedy's, Lascelles', Anstruther's Regiments, Fraser's Highlanders, and the much-loved, much-blamed Louisbourg Grenadiers. Steady, indomitable, silent as cats, precise as mathematicians, he could trust them, as they loved his awkward, pain-twisted body and ugly red hair. "Damme, Jack, didst ever take hell in tow before?" said a sailor to his comrades as the marines, some days before, had grappled with a second flotilla of French fire-ships. "Nay, but I've been in tow of Jimmy Wolfe's red head; that's hell-fire, lad!" was the reply.



From boat to boat the General's eye passed, then shifted to the ships—the Squirrel, the Leostaff, the Seahorse, and the rest—and lastly, to the spot where lay the army of Bougainville. Now an officer came towards him, who said, quietly, "The tide has turned, sir." For reply, he made a swift motion towards the Sutherland's maintop shrouds, and almost instantly lanterns showed in them. In response, the crowded boats began to cast away. Immediately descending the General passed into his boat, drew to the front, and drifted in the current ahead of his gallant forces.

It was two hours after midnight when the boats began to move, and slowly they ranged down the stream, silently steered and carried by the ebbing tide. No paddle, no creaking oarlock broke the stillness; but ever and anon the booming of a thirty-two pounder from the Point Levi battery echoed up the river walls.

To a young midshipman beside him, the General turned and said, "How old are you, sir?"

"Seventeen, sir," was the reply.

"It is the most lasting passion," he said, musing. Then, after a few moments' silence, he repeated aloud these verses from Gray's Elegy—

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

* * * * *

"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."

"Gentlemen," he said, "I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec."

Meanwhile, the tide had swept the foremost boats round the headland above the Anse du Foulon,[30] a tiny bay where Wolfe had determined to land. Suddenly, down from the dark heights there came a challenge: "Qui vive?"

"La France," answered an officer of Fraser's Highlanders, who had learned French in Flanders.

"A quel Regiment?"

"De la Reine," responded the Highlander; and to disarm suspicion he added, "Ne faites pas de bruit, ce sont les vivres." From a deserter, the English had learned that a convoy of provisions was expected down the river that night; and the officer's response deceived the sentry.

[Note 30: Now known as Wolfe's Cove.]

The boats of the Light Infantry swung in to the shore. The twenty-four volunteers, who had been given the hazardous task of scaling the cliff and overpowering Vergor's guard at the top of the path, now commenced the ascent. On the strand below, the van of Wolfe's army breathlessly waited the signal to dash up the cliff to support their daring scouts. Presently quick ringing shots told the anxious General that his men had begun their work, and in a few moments a thin British cheer claimed possession of the rocky pathway up which Wolfe's battalions now swarmed in the misty grey of early morning.

While this army climbed up the steep way to the Heights of Abraham, Admiral Saunders was bombarding Montcalm's intrenchments, and boats filled with marines and soldiers made a feint of landing on the Beauport flats, while shots, bombs, shells, and carcasses burst from Point Levi upon the town. At last, however, the French General grew suspicious of the naval manoeuvres, and in great agitation he rode towards the city. It was six in the morning as he galloped up the slope of the St. Charles, and in utter amazement gazed upon the scarlet ranks of Britain spread across the plain between himself and Bougainville, and nearer to him, on the crest, the white-coated battalion of Guienne which, the day before, he had ordered to occupy the very heights where Wolfe now stood.

Montcalm summoned his army from the trenches at Beauport. In hot haste they crossed the St. Charles, passed under the northern rampart of the city, and in another hour the gates of St. Jean and St. Louis had emptied out upon the battlefield a flood of defenders. It was a gallant sight. The white uniforms of the brave regiments of the line—Royal Roussillon, La Sarre, Guienne, Languedoc, Bearn—mixed with the dark, excitable militia, the sturdy burghers of the town, a band of coureurs de bois in their picturesque hunters' costume, and whooping Indians, painted and raging for battle. Bougainville had not yet arrived from Cap Rouge, and for some mysterious reason Vaudreuil lagged behind at Beauport. Nevertheless, Montcalm determined to attack the English before they had time to intrench themselves. As for Wolfe, he desired nothing better, for while the two forces were numerically not unequal, yet every man among the invaders could be depended upon, while even Montcalm had yet to test fully the undisciplined valour of his Canadian militia.



Outside the city gates, the French at first took up their position on a rising ground in three divisions, having an irregular surface towards the St. Lawrence on their left, and extending across the St. Louis and Ste. Foye roads towards the St. Charles on their right. Indian and Canadian marksmen were posted among the trees and bushes which skirted the plains. Montcalm himself took command of the centre, at the head of the regiment of Languedoc, supported by the battalion of Bearn. M. de Senezergues led the left wing, composed of the regiments of Guienne and Royal Roussillon, supported by the militia of Three Rivers. The right, under M. de Saint-Ours, consisted of the battalion of La Sarre and the militia of Quebec and Montreal.

Wolfe had first drawn up his army with its front towards the St. Louis road, and its right towards the city, but afterwards he altered his position. Confronting the French formation Brigadier Townshend, with Amherst's and the Light Infantry, and Colonel Burton, with a battalion of the Royal Americans, made up the British left, holding a position near the Ste. Foye road, to meet the advance of Bougainville from the west. The centre, under Murray, was composed of Lascelles', Anstruther's, and Fraser's Highlanders; while Monckton commanded the right, which included Bragg's, Otway's, Kennedy's, and the Louisbourg Grenadiers, at whose head, after he had passed along the line, Wolfe placed himself for the charge.

At eight o'clock the French sharpshooters opened fire upon the British left, and skirmishers were thrown out to hold them in check, or drive them from the houses where they sheltered themselves and galled Townshend's men. Three field-pieces, brought from the city, opened on the British brigades with roundshot and canister. The invaders, however, made no return, and were ordered to lie down. No restlessness, no anxiety marked those scarlet columns, whose patience and restraint had been for two months in the crucible of a waiting game. There was no man in all Wolfe's army but knew that final victory or ruin hung upon the issue of that 13th of September.

From bushes, trees, coverts, and fields of grain came a ceaseless hail of fire, and there fell upon the ranks a doggedness, a quiet anger, which settled into grisly patience. These men had seen the stars go down, the cold mottled light of dawn break over the battered city and the heights of Charlesbourg; they had watched the sun come up, and then steal away behind slow-travelling clouds and hanging mist; they had looked over the unreaped cornfields, and the dull slovenly St. Charles, knowing full well that endless leagues of country, north and south, east and west, now lay for the last time in the balance. The rocky precipice of the St. Lawrence cut off all possibility of retreat, and their only help was in themselves. Yet no one faltered.

At ten o'clock Montcalm's three columns moved forward briskly, making a wild rattle—two columns moving towards the left and one towards the right, firing obliquely and constantly as they advanced. Then came Wolfe's command to rise, and his army stood up and waited, their muskets loaded with an extra ball. Suppressed rage filled the ranks as they stood there and took that damnable fire without being able to return a shot. Minute after minute passed. Then came the sharp command to advance. Again the line was halted, and still the withering discharge of musketry fell upon the long silent palisade of red.

At last, when the French were within forty yards, Wolfe raised his sword, a command rang down the long line of battle, and with a crash as of one terrible cannon-shot, the British muskets sang out together. After the smoke had cleared a little, another volley followed with almost the same precision. A light breeze lifted the smoke and mist, and a wayward sunlight showed Montcalm's army retreating like a long white wave from a rocky shore.

Thus checked and confounded, the French army trembled and fell back in broken order. Then, with the order to charge, an exultant British cheer arose, the skirling challenge of the bagpipes and the wild slogan of the Highlanders sounding high over all. Like sickles of death, the flashing broadswords of the clansmen clove through and broke the battalions of La Sarre, and the bayonets of the Forty-Seventh scattered the soldiers of Languedoc into flying companies.

Early in the action Wolfe had been hit in the wrist by a bullet, but he concealed this wound with his handkerchief. A few minutes later, however, as he pressed forward, sword in hand, at the head of the charging Louisbourg Grenadiers, a musket ball struck him in the breast. They bore him, mortally wounded, to the rear.

"It's all over with me," he murmured. The mist of death was already gathering in his eyes.

"They run; see how they run!" exclaimed Lieutenant Brown of the Grenadiers, who supported him. "Who run?" demanded the General like one roused from sleep. "The enemy, sir," responded the subaltern. "Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned Wolfe, with an earnestness that detained the spirit in his almost lifeless body; "tell him to march Webb's regiment down to the St. Charles to cut off their retreat from the bridge."

Then, overcome at last, he turned on his side and whispered, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!"



CHAPTER XV

MURRAY AND DE LEVIS

Within the beleaguered city the sights and sounds of battle caused sickening excitement. An enemy who had gained the heights by such determined valour was destined for victory; and the weary garrison and townsfolk, as they watched and waited anxiously on the ramparts, were more than half prepared for the view presently to meet their eyes. A fresh wind lifting the thick clouds of smoke from the battlefield revealed the scattered legions of France in flight before a conquering army, wildly dashing towards the city gates or the bridge of boats crossing the St. Charles. Montcalm sought in vain to rally his stricken battalions, and was borne backward in the confusion of their mad retreat, until suddenly, pierced by a bullet, he sank in the saddle. Bravely keeping his seat with support from a soldier on either side, he succeeded in entering the city by the St. Louis Gate. Here the excited crowd, which had gathered to hear the latest news from the field, raised a troubled cry at sight of their vanquished chief pale and streaming with blood. "Mon Dieu, O mon Dieu! le Marquis est tue!" they wailed. "It is nothing, it is nothing, do not distress yourselves for me, my good friends," responded the broken hero.

His black charger slowly bore him down the Grande Allee and along the Rue St. Louis, leading a sad procession to the house of Arnoux the surgeon. Being carried inside, he was told that his wound was mortal. "How long have I to live?" he asked. "Twelve hours perhaps," responded the surgeon. "So much the better," said Montcalm; "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." Then, turning to Commandant de Ramezay and the colonel of the Regiment of Royal Roussillon, who stood by, he said: "Gentlemen, to your keeping I commend the honour of France. Endeavour to secure the retreat of my army to-night beyond Cap Rouge. As for myself, I shall pass the night with God, and prepare for death."



Yet ever mindful of the wretched people who hung upon him, he addressed this note to the commander of the English army—

"Monsieur, the humanity of the English sets my mind at peace concerning the fate of the French prisoners and the Canadians, Feel towards them as they have caused me to feel. Do not let them perceive that they have changed masters. Be their protector as I have been their father."



By dawn the next morning his gallant soul had fled. And when another day had gone, and night came again, a silent funeral passed, by the light of a flambeau, to the chapel of the Ursulines for the lonely obsequies. A bursting shell had ploughed a deep trench along the wall of the convent, and there they sadly laid him—fitting rest for one whose life had been spent amid the din and doom of war. In 1833 his skull was exhumed; and to-day it is reverently exposed in the almoners' room of the Ursuline convent—all that remains of as fine a figure, as noble a son of his race as the years have seen.

Here also an interesting tablet, erected by Lord Aylmer in 1835, bears the sympathetic inscription—

HONNEUR A MONTCALM LE DESTIN EN LUI DEROBANT LA VICTOIRE L'A RECOMPENSE PAR UNE MORTE GLORIEUSE.

Besides Montcalm, the French army lost its second and third in command, De Senezergues having expired on one of the English ships, while M. de Saint-Ours was killed in the same bloody charge in which Wolfe also met his death. The French losses in killed and wounded numbered almost fifteen hundred officers and men, the British record being fifty-eight killed, and five hundred and ninety-seven wounded.

When Wolfe was slain the chief command of the British army in Canada had passed to Brigadier Townshend.[31] Expecting every moment to be attacked by Bougainville, Townshend called back his battalions from the charge, and drew them up anew, a movement scarcely accomplished before Bougainville's army was seen advancing from Cap Rouge. Bougainville, however, soon perceived signs of Montcalm's defeat, and unwilling to risk an engagement with a wholly victorious enemy, he retreated without a blow.

[Footnote 31: Afterwards Marquis of Townshend.]

Meanwhile, Governor Vaudreuil had held a council of war in the hornwork which protected the St. Charles bridge. Roused now to intelligent action, he was for making an immediate junction with Bougainville and attacking Townshend before the English position could be strengthened. Bigot recommended the same course; but all the other officers were against it, and the brave but vacillating Vaudreuil was overborne by their counsel. A despairing note was despatched to the little garrison at Quebec; and an army that still outnumbered the British forces began a march thus described by one of the participants: "It was not a retreat, but an abominable flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to cut all our army to pieces. The soldiers were all mixed, scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army were at their heels." Their tents were left standing at the Beauport camp, where in their inglorious haste they had even abandoned their heavy baggage. Passing through Charlesbourg, Lorette, and St. Augustin, by the evening of the 15th they had covered the thirty miles intervening between Quebec and the Jacques-Cartier river.

This desertion by the army was a cruel blow to those who still manned the ramparts of the city. For more than two months they had mended the breaches and fought the fires kindled by the guns of Point Levi; they had stood by their feeble batteries for weary weeks, toiling night and day on half-rations. And now ignominious abandonment was their reward! Of the total population within the walls, twenty-six hundred were women and children, ten hundred were invalids, while the able-bodied defenders, all told, numbered less than a thousand, and even these were worn out by privations.

De Ramezay, the commandant, called a council of war which fourteen officers attended, and all of these but one were in favour of capitulation. The citizens assembled at the house of M. Daine the Mayor, and drew up a petition praying that De Ramezay would not expose the city and its inhabitants to the further horrors of assault. The citizens' memorial recited the tribulations they had already undergone, and pointed out that neither a bombardment continued for sixty-three days, nor ceaseless fatigue and anxiety had sufficed to kill their spirit; that though exhausted by famine, yet in the constant hope of final victory they had forgotten the gnawings of their hunger. But now, deserted by the army, they were not justified in making further sacrifices. Even with the most careful distribution, only eight days' rations remained in the city. Moreover, a conquering army was encamped between Quebec and its source of supply. While there was yet time, they pleaded, honourable terms of capitulation should be demanded.

All this time the milice de la ville, naturally brave, but unwisely led, were fleeing to their neglected homesteads. Some even crossed over to the enemy's camp; and a sergeant actually deserted with the keys of the city gates in his pockets. Meantime Townshend, fully aware of the danger of his position, determined to force the city without delay if the enemy should show a resolute face. In a few weeks at the most, the approach of winter would compel the fleet to leave the river, and should the English army then find itself outside the walls, the fruits of the Battle of the Plains would be entirely lost. Accordingly, he was ready to grant almost any terms of capitulation.

The English trenches drew closer and closer to the walls, and on the evening of the 17th the fleet made a movement as if to bombard the Lower Town, while a column of troops threatened Palace Gate. The drums of the garrison beat the alarm; but the citizens failed to rally, and in despair De Ramezay at last resolved to surrender. A white flag showed upon the ramparts, and as the stars came out, an envoy appeared in the English camp to ask for terms. At eight o'clock the next morning, September 18th, the articles of capitulation had been signed by De Ramezay, Townshend, and Admiral Saunders. Their provisions were, in brief: That the garrison should be accorded the honours of war, and march out bearing their arms and baggage, with flying colours and beating drums; that the troops should be conveyed to France; that the inhabitants, on laying down their arms, should retain their houses, property, and privileges, at least until the treaty of peace should be signed by the sovereigns of England and France. Artillery and military stores were to be surrendered; the sick were to be cared for, and guards were to be posted to protect the convents and churches against possible outrage.

The general orders for the 18th of September describe, prospectively, the formal cession of the fortress town—

"The gates to be taken possession of by Colonel Murray and three companies of Grenadiers, after which the hour will be appointed when the army should march in. Fifty of the Royal Artillery, officers in proportion, one field-piece with a lighted match following them, will march to the Grand Parade, followed by the Commanding Officer and his party, sent to take possession of the town, to whom all the keys of the forts will be delivered, from which party officers' guards will immediately be sent to take possession of all ports and outlets from the town....During this time the Commanding Officer of Artillery will hoist the Union flag of Great Britain at the most conspicuous place of the garrison; the flag-gun will be left on the Grand Parade, fronting the main guard."



Thus passed Quebec into British hands. And the surrender was made none too soon; for even as the garrison yielded, horsemen dashed up to the city gates to announce the return of the French army. M. de Levis, hurrying from Montreal, when the danger of Amherst's advance no longer threatened, had come upon the retreating army of Vaudreuil soon after its arrival at Jacques-Cartier. Notwithstanding their appalling want of discipline, he soon made his presence felt among the fugitives, and despatching courtiers to De Ramezay to admonish him against surrender, this worthy successor of Montcalm marched on to the relief of Quebec. But it was now too late; for when, having made a junction with Bougainville at Cap Rouge, De Levis drew near the city, he saw the red flag of Britain floating from the bastion of Cape Diamond.

On the 19th of September, the day after the capitulation, a fast frigate left for England, bearing the news of victory, together with the embalmed body of the gallant general to whom it was due. Though the event was celebrated there with bonfires and shouts of triumph, yet the nation's tears could not be restrained. "The incidents of dramatic fiction," writes Walpole in his Memoirs of George II., "could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of conquest. Joy, curiosity, astonishment was painted on every countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting." Wolfe's body was laid beside that of his father in Greenwich church; and Parliament erected a monument to his honour in Westminster Abbey. On the Plains of Abraham, also, a large stone was set up to mark the spot where he had fallen; but in 1835 this primitive memorial was superseded by a beautiful pillar, upon which Lord Aylmer, then Governor-General, caused to be inscribed the simple legend—

"HERE DIED WOLFE VICTORIOUS."

Eight years before, in 1827, Lord Dalhousie laid the first stone of the beautiful obelisk overlooking what is now known as Dufferin Terrace, to commemorate the heroism of Wolfe and Montcalm, and bearing this impartial inscription—

WOLFE MONTCALM MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM FAMAM HISTORIA MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS DEDIT A.D. 1827.

But to return to the newly conquered city. It was indeed a scene of desolation. The Lower Town was a heap of ruins, and the streets were all but impassable. In the Upper Town, the Bishop's Palace was in ruins, and of the Cathedral only the shattered walls remained. The Church of the Recollets, which faced upon the Place d'Armes, was a wreck of masonry, while that of the Jesuits was battered beyond repair. The three convents, Ursuline, Hotel-Dieu, and Hospital General, although further removed, had not escaped the terrific cannonade. The Jesuit College, situated in the midst of the town, seemed to have suffered least. As for the inhabitants, they had seen their possessions dissolve in smoke, and were now for the most part dependent upon the English garrison for provisions; in truth, it is difficult to exaggerate the misery and ruin which became the care of the new garrison.



Nor were the French the only sufferers. At the first sign of winter the English fleet departed for home, Admiral Saunders and General Townshend sailing away on the 22nd of October, followed four days later by the wounded Brigadier Monckton with the remaining ships. All available stores had been landed, but General Murray was compelled to limit the number of his garrison owing to the scarcity of supplies; and now, with about seven thousand men on short rations, he must hold Quebec until English ships could return to his relief in spring. Such was the doubtful situation in which Murray stood in November; and to add to his danger, De Levis and Bougainville lay encamped only a few leagues away, with a force far more numerous than his own, and untroubled by anxiety as to supplies.

The hardships of that winter are detailed in the journals of General Murray and Captain Knox. The first distress was a famine of firewood, to meet which detachments of soldiers were detailed to fell trees in the woods of Ste. Foye. They harnessed themselves to the timber like horses, and dragged it thence over the snow to the city. The storms and keen frosts of a Canadian winter were a painful experience for the ill-clothed soldiery, who adopted the most eccentric devices to keep themselves from freezing. "Our guards at the grand parade," writes Knox, "make a most grotesque appearance in their different dresses; and our inventions to guard us against the extreme rigours of this climate are various beyond imagination. The uniformity, as well as the nicety, of the clean, methodical soldiers is buried in the rough, fur-wrought garb of the frozen Laplander; and we rather resemble a masquerade than a body of regular troops, insomuch that I have frequently been accosted by my acquaintances, whom, though their voices were familiar to me, I could not discover, or conceive who they were." So long as the troops relied upon their regimental uniforms, the Highlanders necessarily suffered most of all from cold, until the nuns of the Hospital took pity upon them and fell to knitting long woollen hose.

By the first week in December it became necessary to relieve the guard every hour instead of every two hours; but even then frozen ears and fingers and toes were common casualties. Discipline relaxed, and the soldiers began to solace themselves by debauch. Drunkenness became so frequent that Murray cancelled the tavern licenses; and any man convicted of that offence received twenty lashes every morning until he divulged the name of the liquor-seller. Theft and pillage were strenuously dealt with, one man expiating his offence upon the citadel gibbet. Finding that many of his soldiers were deserting, the General banished from the city certain priests whom he suspected of intrigue. On the other hand, he proved a generous friend to those well-disposed Canadians who had laid down their arms and maintained their neutrality, allowing them all the liberty and freedom consistent with the dangers of his own predicament. No French inhabitants, however, were allowed to work upon the batteries or fortifications, to walk upon the ramparts, or to frequent the streets after dark without a lantern; and if found abroad after tattoo-beating they were arrested.

So great was the fear of treason and surprise that a strong force constantly held the gates, the guard-houses always containing about a thousand men, who permitted none to pass without a permit from the General. To protect the approaches of the town, strong outposts were maintained at Ste. Foye and Lorette; and on the other side of the river, at Point Levi, a detachment of two hundred men held the south shore against surprises. As the winter wore away, it became increasingly evident that an attempt to recapture Quebec would not long be delayed. But although more than a thousand of the garrison were on the sick list, owing mainly to the tainted water of the wells, the laborious commandant kept good heart for the struggle, being in temperament cheerful, generous, and full of resource. Events proved, moreover, that he was daring even to the point of indiscretion.

It was now March, and the campaign opened with a series of skirmishes round the newly-fortified English outposts. Sharp fights took place at Point Levi and at Lorette; and Captain M'Donald, with five hundred men, even ventured as far up the river as St. Augustin to attack the strong post which Bougainville had established at Le Calvaire. Within the walls of Quebec, fever, dysentery, and scurvy grew so malignant that by the middle of April hardly more than three thousand men were fit for duty; and all the while evidence of the concentration of the French forces grew more apparent. So long before as the 26th of January, Lieutenant Montresor had been despatched over the snow with twelve rangers to apprise General Amherst of the plight of the city; and on the 21st of April the battered schooner Lawrence, the only craft upon which Murray could lay hands, was sent eastward to hasten Lord Colville's fleet when it should arrive in the river.

Still, the vigilant defenders of Quebec were only half aware of the threatening danger; and even as the Lawrence raced down the stream to bring help, the French army was advancing upon the city. Starting at Montreal in a fleet of bateaux, the forces of De Levis and Vaudreuil had picked up the river garrisons as they advanced; and by the time they arrived at Pointe-aux-Trembles, their numbers had swelled to nine thousand men, while no word of their approach had as yet reached Quebec. On the night of the 26th of April, however, a remarkable incident brought timely warning.

Darkness lay upon the river, and as they saw the creaking ice-floes sweeping up and down with stream or tide—a condition of the river known in Quebec as "the chariot,"—the watchmen shivered, and thanked the fates which kept them on dry land on such a night. Suddenly a cry of distress blew up from the river—the moaning of the wind, thought the guard who paced the quay of the Cul-de-sac. But again the plaint fell upon his ears; and as he peered through the darkness, holding his breath to listen, he knew it was a human voice. A boat put out amid the drifting ice, and guided by the cries, the sailors found a man half dead upon a tiny floe. With difficulty he was rescued and carried ashore; and when cordials had revived him he told his story. He was a sergeant of artillery in the army come to retake Quebec. In attempting to land at Cap Rouge his boat had come to grief; all his companions had been drowned before his eyes; but he had contrived to drag himself upon the drifting ice.[32] It was three o'clock in the morning when General Murray was awakened to receive this disturbing news. At once the reveille was sounded, and while it was yet dark the troops stood under arms. At dawn a strong detachment marched out through the St. John and St. Louis gates, skirted along the plains, and came to the declivity in which, at Ste. Foye, the plateau of Quebec falls away to the lowlands. Here, in a strong position, they awaited the enemy. On swept De Levis to the city he had sworn to recapture; and as his army emerged from the wood, the strengthened outpost of Ste. Foye opened its guns upon them. Discouraged by the brisk cannonade and musketry fire, De Levis, who was ignorant of the comparative weakness of the English force, made no attempt to storm the heights, but ordered his men to fall back, his new plan being to outflank the enemy by a night march. As for the English, seeing how impossible it was to hold the outpost against so large an army, they spiked their guns, destroyed their works, and finally withdrew to the city.

[Footnote 32: This romantic story is not fully established. Parkman cites it as historical, but Kingsford considers it disproved by General Murray's Journal. Its original source is the diary of the Chevalier de Levis, but it also appears in The Campaign of 1760, attributed to the Chevalier Johnstone, Montcalm's Scotch aide-de-camp.]



Once again Quebec was on the eve of invasion, and as Murray contemplated his serious position, it is hardly a matter of wonder that his plan of defence savoured more of boldness than of prudence. The breached ramparts offered but a feeble defence; the frost-bound earth made it impossible to protect the city by an intrenched camp; and the commissariat department could not sustain a long investment. The situation is well summarised in the General's letter to Pitt: "The enemy was greatly superior in number, it is true; but when I considered that our little army was in the habit of beating the enemy, and had a very fine train of field artillery; that shutting ourselves at once within the walls was putting all upon the single chance of holding out for a considerable time in a wretched fortification, I resolved to give them battle; and half an hour after six in the morning we marched with all the force I could muster, namely, three thousand men."



It was the 28th of April, and the snow still lay upon the ground. Murray's army marched out through the gates in two columns, and took up a strong position on that rolling mound upon the Plains which was known as Les Buttes-a-Neveu. The force was disposed as follows: The right wing, consisting of the divisions of Amherst, Anstruther, and Webb, with the second battalion Royal Americans, was commanded by Colonel Burton; Colonel Fraser was in charge of the left, which comprised Kennedy's and Bragg's divisions, and Lascelles' Highlanders; while Otway's and the third battalion Royal Americans, commanded by Colonel Young, formed a corps of reserve. Major Dalling, with the Light Infantry, covered the right; and Hazen's Rangers and a company of volunteers, under Captain Donald M'Donald, were on the left. Each battalion had two field-pieces.

As the English troops were thus forming, Murray rode ahead to reconnoitre the enemy's position. Their vanguard had already reached the brink of the cliff above the Anse du Foulon, where they were hastily engaged in throwing up redoubts; and further away, the main body was moving along the road from Ste. Foye. Even as he looked, the two foremost brigades swung across the plateau towards Sillery woods. Now, thought Murray, was the most favourable moment for attack, De Levis being still on the march; and hurrying back, he ordered his columns to the attack. With a cheer the red lines swept forward, dragging their howitzers and field-pieces through the heavy slush of mud and snow; and when at length they halted and opened fire at short range, their artillery caused such disorder in the forming French lines, that De Levis was forced to withdraw the brigades composing the left wing to the cover of the woods upon their flank. The English mistook this movement for a retreat, and pressing forward Murray soon found himself on less advantageous ground. His right division stood knee-deep in a meadow of melting snow, where the guns could only be served with the greatest difficulty, and upon this disabled wing the French left once more swept out of the woods. Before their impetuous rush the Light Infantry gave way, and so great was the disorder of this brigade that it could take no further part in the action. The English left was meeting a similar repulse, and from Sillery wood, where the French had taken temporary cover, there issued such a storm of musketry, that Fraser's column recoiled before it. Murray was outnumbered all along the line, and when De Levis overlapped both left and right and threatened his enemy's flank, the English General gave the order to retire. The guns, however, being immovably fixed in the snow and mud, had to be spiked and abandoned. With muttered curses the grisly veterans retreated unwillingly towards the city walls; but they had inflicted on De Levis so decided a check that he judged it prudent to refrain from pursuit.



Such was the battle of Ste. Foye, without doubt the most severe of the campaign. The English lost more than a thousand, or more than a third of the whole army; the losses of the French have been variously estimated, but they were probably as heavy as those of their foe. Officially reported by De Levis, they numbered eight hundred and thirty-three.

It is a pretty walk to-day, out through St. John's Gate and along the Ste. Foye road. For a mile or two the leafy avenue is lined with villas till the picturesque heights are reached, overlooking the valley of the St. Charles, where Murray and De Levis met in fateful conflict. Here, where the April snow was dyed by the blood of two valorous armies, is set up a tall pillar of iron, surmounted by a statue of Bellona, the gift of Prince Napoleon Bonaparte in 1855.

- AUX BRAVES[33] -

This is its simple inscription—to the brave of both nations whose sons contended for the mastery of a wide dominion. The heroes of Quebec, French and English, have shared more than one common monument, and this community of interest and tradition, nursed from wise beginnings, and accepted as a matter of course for a century and a half of good understanding, has with a subtle and gracious alchemy helped to solve a national problem.

[Footnote 33: Aux braves de 1760, erige par la Societe St. Jean Baptiste de Quebec.]

The defeat of Murray at Ste. Foye is sometimes called the Second Battle of the Plains. Its issue was so far from decisive that De Levis no longer thought of redeeming Quebec by assault, believing that if the city was again to fall into the hands of France, it could only be through regular investment and siege. Accordingly, moving his lines forward to the high ground of Les Buttes-a-Neveu, he there began his intrenchments. Meanwhile, the soldiers in the city were working night and day to better its defences. Barricades were erected in the streets, fascines strengthened the ramparts, the St. Jean and St. Louis gates were closed, the latter being placed under the protection of an outwork. Men and officers alike toiled ceaselessly, harnessing themselves to the guns, and working on the batteries with pickaxe and spade. Even the wounded demanded employment, the convalescent filling sand-bags for the fortifications, while those in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon which night and day belched shot and shell upon the besiegers' trenches. When, however, the enemy's field-pieces were in position, the city once more tasted the horror of bombardment. But within the walls, in spite of scurvy, fever, and short rations, the most resolute spirit prevailed. Murray's energy and resource fired the enthusiasm of his men, who saw that only the failure of food and ammunition could bring them to defeat. Both besiegers and besieged dwelt in hourly expectation of ships from Europe—De Levis, because he had sent to France for help at once upon Montcalm's defeat, and Murray because the return of the English fleet was part of the first plan of campaign. Both knew that the fate of Quebec belonged to the fleet arriving first.

At last, on the 9th of May, a ship of war was descried in the river. The gaunt and toil-worn garrison were almost prostrate with excitement. Slowly the frigate beat up into the basin before the town, not yet displaying her ensign. Through a mishap to the halyards, no flag floated over the high bastion of Cape Diamond; but to make the stranger declare herself, Murray ordered a sailor to climb up the citadel flag-staff with the colours. Immediately the Union Jack ran up to the frigate's masthead, and the pent-up feelings of the garrison found relief. It was the Leostaff, no stranger, indeed, to Quebec; and she brought news that Colville's fleet was already in the river. "The gladness of the troops," writes Captain Knox, "is not to be expressed. Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapets in the face of the enemy, and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost an hour. The garrison, the enemy's camp, the bay, and circumjacent country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery, for the gunners were so elated that they did nothing but fire and load for a considerable time."