CHAPTER XXIX.

 1759, 1760.   SAINTE-FOY. Quebec after the Siege ? Captain Knox and the Nuns ? Escape of French Ships ? Winter at Quebec ? Threats of Lévis ? Attacks ? Skirmishes ? Feat of the Rangers ? State of the Garrison ? The French prepare to retake Quebec ? Advance of Lévis ? The Alarm ? Sortie of the English ? Rash Determination of Murray ? Battle of Ste.-Foy ? Retreat of the English ? Lévis besieges Quebec ? Spirit of the Garrison ? Peril of their Situation ? Relief ? Quebec saved ? Retreat of Lévis ? The News in England.   The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and the chill days of a fitful November passed over Quebec in alternations of rain and frost, sunshine and snow. The troops, driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all gathered within the walls. Their own artillery had so battered the place that it was not easy to find shelter. The Lower Town was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls. As you ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left were a mass of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at see-saw among the fallen planks and timbers. [816] Even in the Upper 328 V2 Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped. The Cathedral was burned to a shell. The solid front of the College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-balls, and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered. The church of the Recollects suffered still more. The bombshells that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from the graves beneath. [817] Even the more distant H?tel-Dieu was pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the halls and chambers. [818] [816] Drawings made on the spot by Richard Short. These drawings, twelve in number, were engraved and published in 1761. [817] Short's Views in Quebec, 1759. Compare Pontbriand, in N. Y. Col. Docs., X. 1,057. [818] Casgrain, H?tel-Dieu de Québec, 445. The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but a shapeless mass of ruins. Confusion, disorder, pillage reign even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of severity every day. Everybody rushes hither and thither, without knowing why. Each searches for his possessions, and, not finding his own, seizes those of other people. English and French, all is chaos alike. The inhabitants, famished and destitute, escape to the country. Never was there seen such a sight." [819] [819] Berniers à Bourlamaque, 27 Sept. 1759. Quebec swarmed with troops. There were guard-houses at twenty different points; sentinels paced the ramparts, squads of men went the rounds, soldiers off duty strolled the streets, some in mitre 329 V2 caps and some black three-cornered hats; while a ceaseless rolling of drums and a rigid observance of military forms betrayed the sense of a still imminent danger. While some of the inhabitants left town, others remained, having no refuge elsewhere. They were civil to the victors, but severe towards their late ruler. "The citizens," says Knox, "particularly the females, reproach M. Vaudreuil upon every occasion, and give full scope to bitter invectives." He praises the agreeable manners and cheerful spirit of the Canadian ladies, concerning whom another officer also writes: "It is very surprising with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection—Fortune de guerre. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time." [820] [820] Alexander Campbell to John Floyd, 22 Oct. 1759. Campbell was a lieutenant of the Highlanders; Lloyd was a Connecticut merchant. Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable. The change, however, was an agreeable one when he was ordered 330 V2 for a week to the General Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the enemy. Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies, nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with gratitude and respect. "When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy. Each patient has his bed, with curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him. Every sick or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young, handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful. Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities of taking great latitudes if they are so disposed; but I never heard any of them charged with the least levity." The nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of their new masters, whom one of them describes as the "most moderate of all conquerors." "I lived here," Knox continues, "at the French King's table, with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries. Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their company. They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an O mon Dieu!" He walked in the garden with the French officers, 331 V2 played at cards with them, and passed the time so pleasantly that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard life of camp and garrison. Mère de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay, late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says that he "fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her virgin sisters." The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors still answers at many points to that described by the careful pen of their military guest. Throughout the war they and the nuns of the H?tel-Dieu had been above praise in their assiduous devotion to the sick and wounded. Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction, and more daring than prudent. He befriended the Canadians, issued strict orders against harming them in person or property, hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort. In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with them their tobacco and rations. The inhabitants were disarmed, and 332 V2 required to take the oath of allegiance. Murray reported in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward, was in subjection to the British Crown. [821] [821] Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760. Murray, Journal, 1759, 1760. Late in October it was rumored that some of the French ships in the river above Quebec were preparing to run by the batteries. This was the squadron which had arrived in the spring with supplies, and had lain all summer at Batiscan, in the Richelieu, and at other points beyond reach of the English. After nearly a month of expectancy, they at length appeared, anchored off Sillery on the twenty-first of November, and tried to pass the town on the dark night of the twenty-fourth. Seven or eight of them succeeded; four others ran aground and were set on fire by their crews, excepting one which was stranded on the south shore and abandoned. Captain Miller, with a lieutenant and above forty men, boarded her; when, apparently through their own carelessness, she blew up. [822] Most of the party were killed by the explosion, and the rest, including the two officers, were left in a horrible condition between life and death. Thus they remained till a Canadian, venturing on board in search of plunder, found them, called his neighbors to his aid, carried them to his own house, and after applying, with the utmost kindness, what simple remedies he knew, went over to Quebec and told of the disaster. Fortunately for themselves, the sufferers soon died. [822] Murray to Amherst, 25 Jan. 1760. Not, as some believed, by a train laid by the French. 333 V2 December came, and brought the Canadian winter, with its fierce light and cold, glaring snowfields, and piercing blasts that scorch the cheek like a firebrand. The men were frost-bitten as they dug away the dry, powdery drifts that the wind had piled against the rampart. The sentries were relieved every hour; yet feet and fingers were continually frozen. The clothing of the troops was ill-suited to the climate, and, though stoves had been placed in the guard and barrack rooms, the supply of fuel constantly fell short. The cutting and dragging of wood was the chief task of the garrison for many weeks. Parties of axemen, strongly guarded, were always at work in the forest of Ste.-Foy, four or five miles from Quebec, and the logs were brought to town on sledges dragged by the soldiers. Eight of them were harnessed in pairs to each sledge; and as there was always danger from Indians and bushrangers, every man carried his musket slung at his back. The labor was prodigious; for frequent snowstorms made it necessary again and again to beat a fresh track through the drifts. The men bore their hardships with admirable good humor; and once a party of them on their return, dragging their load through the street, met a Canadian, also with a load of wood, which was drawn by a team of dogs harnessed much like themselves. They accosted them as yoke-fellows, comrades, and brothers; asked them what allowance of pork and rum they got; and invited them and their owner to mess at the regimental barracks. 334 V2 The appearance of the troops on duty within the town, as described by Knox, was scarcely less eccentric. "Our guards on the grand parade make a most grotesque appearance in their different dresses; and our inventions to guard us against the extreme rigor of this climate are various beyond imagination. The uniformity as well as nicety of the clean, methodical soldier 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. Besides, every man seems to be in a continual hurry; for instead of walking soberly through the streets, we are obliged to observe a running or trotting pace." Early in January there was a storm of sleet, followed by severe frost, which glazed the streets with ice. Knox, being ordered to mount guard in the Lower Town, found the descent of Mountain Street so slippery that it was impossible to walk down with safety, especially as the muskets of the men were loaded; and the whole party, seating themselves on the ground, slid one after another to the foot of the hill. The Highlanders, in spite of their natural hardihood, suffered more from the cold than the other troops, as their national costume was but a sorry defence against the Canadian winter. A detachment of these breechless warriors being on guard at the General 335 V2 Hospital, the nuns spent their scanty leisure in knitting for them long woollen hose, which they gratefully accepted, though at a loss to know whether modesty or charity inspired the gift. From the time when the English took possession of Quebec, reports had come in through deserters that Lévis meant to attack and recover it. Early in November there was a rumor that he was about to march upon it with fifteen thousand men. In December word came that he was on his way, resolved to storm it on or about the twenty-second, and dine within the walls, under the French flag, on Christmas Day. He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults on mock ramparts of snow. There was more tangible evidence that the enemy was astir. Murray had established two fortified outposts, one at Ste.-Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette. War-parties hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm. A large body of French grenadiers appeared at the latter place in February, and drove off a herd of cattle; when a detachment of rangers, much inferior in number, set upon them, put them to flight, and recovered the plunder. At the same time a party of regulars, Canadians, and Indians took up a strong position near the church at Point Levi, and sent a message to the English officers that a large company of expert hairdressers were ready to wait upon them whenever they required their services. The allusion was of course 336 V2 to the scalp-lifting practices of the Indians and bushrangers. The river being now hard frozen, Murray sent over a detachment of light infantry under Major Dalling. A sharp fight ensued on the snow, around the church, and in the neighboring forest, where the English soldiers, taught to use snow-shoes by the rangers, routed the enemy, and killed or captured a considerable number. A third post was then established at the church and the priest's house adjacent. Some days after, the French came back in large numbers, fortified themselves with felled trees, and then attacked the English position. The firing being heard at Quebec, the light infantry went over to the scene of action, and Murray himself followed on the ice, with the Highlanders and other troops. Before he came up, the French drew off and retreated to their breastwork, where they were attacked and put to flight, the nimble Highlanders capturing a few, while the greater part made their escape. As it became known that the French held a strong post at Le Calvaire, near St. Augustin, two days' march from Quebec, Captain Donald MacDonald was sent with five hundred men to attack it. He found the enemy behind a breastwork of logs protected by an abattis. The light infantry advanced and poured in a brisk fire; on which the French threw down their arms and fled. About eighty of them were captured; but their commander, Herbin, escaped, leaving to the victors his watch, hat and feather, wine, liquor-case, and 337 V2 mistress. The English had six men wounded and nearly a hundred frost-bitten. [823] [823] Knox, II. 275. Murray, Journal. Fraser, Journal. Vaudreuil, in his usual way, multiplies the English force by three. Captain Hazen and his rangers soon after had a notable skirmish. They were posted in a house not far from the station at Lorette. A scout came in with news that a large party of the enemy was coming to attack them; on which Hazen left a sergeant and fourteen men in the house, and set out for Lorette with the rest to ask a reinforcement. On the way he met the French, who tried to surround him; and he told his men to fall back to the house. They remonstrated, saying that they "felt spry," and wanted to show the regulars that provincials could fight as well as red-coats. Thereupon they charged the enemy, gave them a close volley of buckshot and bullets, and put them to flight; but scarcely had they reloaded their guns when they were fired upon from behind. Another body of assailants had got into their rear, in order to cut them off. They faced about, attacked them, and drove them back like the first. The two French parties then joined forces, left Hazen to pursue his march, and attacked the fourteen rangers in the house, who met them with a brisk fire. Hazen and his men heard the noise; and, hastening back, fell upon the rear of the French, while those in the house sallied and attacked them in front. They were again routed; and the rangers chased them two miles, killing six of them and capturing seven. Knox, in whose eyes provincials usually 338 V2 find no favor, launches this time into warm commendation of "our simply honest New England men." Fresh reports came in from time to time that the French were gathering all their strength to recover Quebec; and late in February these stories took a definite shape. A deserter from Montreal brought Murray a letter from an officer of rangers, who was a prisoner at that place, warning him that eleven thousand men were on the point of marching to attack him. Three other deserters soon after confirmed the news, but added that the scheme had met with a check; for as it was intended to carry the town by storm, a grand rehearsal had taken place, with the help of scaling-ladders planted against the wall of a church; whereupon the Canadians rushed with such zeal to the assault that numerous broken legs, arms, and heads ensued, along with ruptures, sprains, bruises, and dislocations; insomuch, said the story, that they became disgusted with the attempt. All remained quiet till after the middle of April, when the garrison was startled by repeated assurances that at the first breaking-up of the ice all Canada would be upon them. Murray accordingly ordered the French inhabitants to leave the town within three days. [824] [824] Ordonnance faite à Québec le 21 Avril, 1760, par son Excellence, Jacques Murray. In some respects the temper of the troops was excellent. In the petty warfare of the past winter they had generally been successful, proving themselves 339 V2 a match for the bushrangers and Indians on their own ground; so that, as Sergeant Johnson remarks, in his odd way, "Very often a small number of our men would put to flight a considerable party of those Cannibals." They began to think themselves invincible; yet they had the deepest cause for anxiety. The effective strength of the garrison was reduced to less than half, and of those that remained fit for duty, hardly a man was entirely free from scurvy. The rank and file had no fresh provisions; and, in spite of every precaution, this malignant disease, aided by fever and dysentery, made no less havoc among them than among the crews of Jacques Cartier at this same place two centuries before. Of about seven thousand men left at Quebec in the autumn, scarcely more than three thousand were fit for duty on the twenty-fourth of April. [825] About seven hundred had found temporary burial in the snowdrifts, as the frozen ground was impenetrable as a rock. [825] Return of the present State of His Majesty's Forces in Garrison at Quebec, 24 April, 1760 (Public Record Office). Meanwhile Vaudreuil was still at Montreal, where he says that he "arrived just in time to take the most judicious measures and prevent General Amherst from penetrating into the colony." [826] During the winter some of the French regulars were kept in garrison at the outposts, and the rest quartered on the inhabitants; while the Canadians were dismissed to their homes, subject to be 340 V2 mustered again at the call of the Governor. Both he and Lévis were full of the hope of retaking Quebec. He had spies and agents among Murray's soldiers; and though the citizens had sworn allegiance to King George, some of them were exceedingly useful to his enemies. Vaudreuil had constant information of the state of the garrison. He knew that the scurvy was his active and powerful ally, and that the hospitals and houses of Quebec were crowded with the sick. At the end of March he was informed that more than half the British were on the sick-list; and it was presently rumored that Murray had only two thousand men able to bear arms. [827] With every allowance for exaggeration in these reports, it was plain that the French could attack their invaders in overwhelming force. [826] Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1759. [827] Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Avril, 1760. The difficulty was to find means of transportation. The depth of the snow and the want of draught animals made it necessary to wait till the river should become navigable; but preparation was begun at once. Lévis was the soul of the enterprise. Provisions were gathered from far and near; cannon, mortars, and munitions of war were brought from the frontier posts, and butcher-knives were fitted to the muzzles of guns to serve the Canadians in place of bayonets. All the workmen about Montreal were busied in making tools and gun-carriages. Stores were impressed from the merchants; and certain articles, which could not otherwise be had, were smuggled, with extraordinary 341 V2 address, out of Quebec itself. [828] Early in spring the militia received orders to muster for the march. There were doubts and discontent; but, says a contemporary, "sensible people dared not speak, for if they did they were set down as English." Some there were who in secret called the scheme "Lévis' folly;" yet it was perfectly rational, well conceived, and conducted with vigor and skill. Two frigates, two sloops-of-war, and a number of smaller craft still remained in the river, under command of Vauquelin, the brave officer who had distinguished himself at the siege of Louisbourg. The stores and cannon were placed on board these vessels, the army embarked in a fleet of bateaux, and on the twentieth of April the whole set out together for the scene of action. They comprised eight battalions of troops of the line and two of colony troops; with the colonial artillery, three thousand Canadians, and four hundred Indians. When they left Montreal, their effective strength, besides Indians, is said by Lévis to have been six thousand nine hundred and ten, a number which was increased as he advanced by the garrisons of Jacques-Cartier, Déschambault, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, as well as by the Canadians on both side of the St. Lawrence below Three Rivers; for Vaudreuil had ordered the militia captains to join his standard, with all their followers, armed and equipped, on pain of death. [829] 342 V2 These accessions appear to have raised his force to between eight and nine thousand. [828] Vaudreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1760. [829] Vaudreuil aux Capitaines de Milice, 16 Avril, 1760. I am indebted to Abbé H. R. Casgrain for a copy of this letter. The ice still clung to the river banks, the weather was bad, and the navigation difficult; but on the twenty-sixth the army landed at St. Augustin, crossed the river of Cap-Rouge on bridges of their own making, and moved upon the English outpost at Old Lorette. The English abandoned it and fell back to Ste.-Foy. Lévis followed. Night came on, with a gale from the southeast, a driving rain, and violent thunder, unusual at that season. The road, a bad and broken one, led through the marsh called La Suède. Causeways and bridges broke down under the weight of the marching columns and plunged the men into water, mud, and half-thawed ice. "It was a frightful night," says Lévis; "so dark that but for the flashes of lightning we should have been forced to stop." The break of day found the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther side of the marsh. The storm had abated; and they saw before them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church of Ste.-Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to right and left. This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five or six miles towards the left, takes the names of C?te d'Abraham and C?te Ste.-Geneviève. The church and the houses were occupied by British troops, who, as the French debouched from the woods, opened on them with cannon, and compelled 343 V2 them to fall back. Though the ridge at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had Lévis known how few were as yet there to oppose him, he might have carried it by an assault in front. As it was, he resolved to wait till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along the border of the wood. It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh. Till late in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last through a singular stroke of fortune. Some time after midnight the watch on board the frigate "Racehorse," which had wintered in the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cry of distress from the midst of the darkness that covered the St. Lawrence. Captain Macartney was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity, he ordered a boat to put out amid the drifting ice that was sweeping up the river with the tide. Guided by the faint cries, the sailors found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they carried him to the ship. It was long before he was able to speak intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies, he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by climbing upon the cake of ice where they had 344 V2 discovered him; that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of Orleans, and then brought up to Quebec by the flow; and, finally, that Lévis was marching on the town with twelve thousand men at his back. He was placed in a hammock and carried up Mountain Street to the quarters of the General, who was roused from sleep at three o'clock in the morning to hear his story. The troops were ordered under arms; and soon after daybreak Murray marched out with ten pieces of cannon and more than half the garrison. His principal object was to withdraw the advanced posts at Ste.-Foy, Cap-Rouge, Sillery, and Anse du Foulon. The storm had turned to a cold, drizzling rain, and the men, as they dragged their cannon through snow and mud, were soon drenched to the skin. On reaching Ste.-Foy, they opened a brisk fire from the heights upon the woods which now covered the whole army of Lévis; and being rejoined by the various outposts, returned to Quebec in the afternoon, after blowing up the church, which contained a store of munitions that they had no means of bringing off. When they entered Quebec a gill of rum was served out to each man; several houses in the suburb of St. Roch were torn down to supply them with firewood for drying their clothes; and they were left to take what rest they could against the morrow. The French, meanwhile, took possession of the abandoned heights; and while some filled the houses, barns, and sheds of Ste.-Foy and its neighborhood, 345 V2 others, chiefly Canadians, crossed the plateau to seek shelter in the village of Sillery. Three courses were open to Murray. He could defend Quebec, fortify himself outside the walls on the Buttes-à-Neveu, or fight Lévis at all risks. The walls of Quebec could not withstand a cannonade, and he had long intended to intrench his army on the Buttes, as a better position of defence; but the ground, frozen like a rock, had thus far made the plan impracticable. Even now, though the surface was thawed, the soil beneath was still frost-bound, making the task of fortification extremely difficult, if indeed the French would give him time for it. Murray was young in years, and younger still in impulse. He was ardent, fearless, ambitious, and emulous of the fame of Wolfe. "The enemy," he soon after wrote to Pitt, "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 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." [830] Some of these had left the hospitals of their own accord in their eagerness to take part in the fray. [830] Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760. The rain had ceased; but as the column emerged from St. Louis Gate, the scene before them was a 346 V2 dismal one. As yet there was no sign of spring. Each leafless bush and tree was dark with clammy moisture; patches of bare earth lay oozy and black on the southern slopes: but elsewhere the ground was still covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow and depression was full of that half-liquid, lead-colored mixture of snow and water which New England schoolboys call "slush," for all drainage was stopped by the frozen subsoil. The troops had with them two howitzers and twenty field-pieces, which had been captured when Quebec surrendered, and had formed a part of that very battery which Ramesay refused to Montcalm at the battle of the autumn before. As there were no horses, the cannon were dragged by some of the soldiers, while others carried picks and spades; for as yet Murray seems not to have made up his mind whether to fortify or fight. Thus they advanced nearly half a mile; till reaching the Buttes-à-Neveu, they formed in order of battle along their farther slopes, on the same ground that Montcalm had occupied on the morning of his death. Murray went forward to reconnoitre. Immediately before him was a rising ground, and, beyond it, a tract of forest called Sillery Wood, a mile or more distant. Nearer, on the left, he could see two blockhouses built by the English in the last autumn, not far from the brink of the plateau above the Anse du Foulon where Wolfe climbed the heights. On the right, at the opposite brink of the plateau, was a house and a fortified windmill 347 V2 belonging to one Dumont. The blockhouses, the mill, and the rising ground between them were occupied by the vanguard of Lévis' army; while, behind, he could descry the main body moving along the road from Ste.-Foy, then turning, battalion after battalion, and rapidly marching across the plateau along the edge of Sillery Wood. The two brigades of the leading column had already reached the blockhouses by the Anse du Foulon, and formed themselves as the right wing of the French line of battle; but those behind were not yet in position. Murray, kindling at the sight, thought that so favorable a moment was not to be lost, and ordered an advance. His line consisted of eight battalions, numbering a little above two thousand. In the intervals between them the cannon were dragged through slush and mud by five hundred men; and, at a little distance behind, the remaining two battalions followed as a reserve. The right flank was covered by Dalling's light infantry; the left by Hazen's company of rangers and a hundred volunteers under Major MacDonald. They all moved forward till they were on nearly the same ground where Wolfe's army had been drawn up. Then the cannon unlimbered, and opened on the French with such effect that Lévis, who was on horseback in the middle of the field, sent orders to the corps of his left to fall back to the cover of the woods. The movement caused some disorder. Murray mistook it for retreat, and commanded a farther advance. The whole British line, extending itself 348 V2 towards the right, pushed eagerly forward: in doing which it lost the advantage of the favorable position it had occupied; and the battalions of the right soon found themselves on low grounds, wading in half-melted snow, which in some parts was knee deep. Here the cannon could no longer be worked with effect. Just in front, a small brook ran along the hollow, through soft mud and saturated snowdrifts, then gurgled down the slope on the right, to lose itself in the meadows of the St. Charles. A few rods before this brook stood the house and windmill of Dumont, occupied by five companies of French grenadiers. The light infantry at once attacked them. A furious struggle ensued, till at length the French gave way, and the victors dashed forward to follow up their advantage. Their ardor cost them dear. The corps on the French left, which had fallen back into the woods, now advanced again as the cannon ceased to play, rushing on without order but with the utmost impetuosity, led by a gallant old officer, Colonel Dalquier, of the battalion of Béarn. A bullet in the body could not stop him. The light infantry were overwhelmed; and such of them as were left alive were driven back in confusion upon the battalions behind them, along the front of which they remained dispersed for some minutes, preventing the troops from firing on the advancing French, who thus had time to reform their ranks. At length the light infantry got themselves out of the way and retired to the rear, where, having lost nearly all their officers, they remained during the rest of the 349 V2 fight. Another struggle followed for the house and mill of Dumont, of which the French again got possession, to be again driven out; and it remained, as if by mutual consent, unoccupied for some time by either party. For above an hour more the fight was hot and fierce. "We drove them back as long as we had ammunition for our cannon," says Sergeant Johnson; but now it failed, and no more was to be had, because, in the eccentric phrase of the sergeant, the tumbrils were "bogged in deep pits of snow." While this was passing on the English right, it fared still worse with them on the left. The advance of the line was no less disastrous here than there. It brought the troops close to the woods which circled round to this point from the French rear, and from which the Canadians, covered by the trees, now poured on them a deadly fire. Here, as on the right, Lévis had ordered his troops to fall back for a time; but when the fire of the English cannon ceased, they advanced again, and their artillery, though consisting of only three pieces, played its part with good effect. Hazen's rangers and MacDonald's volunteers attacked and took the two adjacent blockhouses, but could not hold them. Hazen was wounded, MacDonald killed, and their party overpowered. The British battalions held their ground till the French, whose superior numbers enabled them to extend themselves on both sides beyond the English line, made a furious attack on the left wing, in front and flank. The reserves were 350 V2 ordered up, and the troops stood for a time in sullen desperation under the storm of bullets; but they were dropping fast in the blood-stained snow, and the order came at length to fall back. They obeyed with curses: "Damn it, what is falling back but retreating?" [831] The right wing, also outflanked, followed the example of the left. Some of the corps tried to drag off their cannon; but being prevented by the deep mud and snow they spiked the pieces and abandoned them. The French followed close, hoping to cut off the fugitives from the gates of Quebec; till Lévis, seeing that the retreat, though precipitate, was not entirely without order, thought best to stop the pursuit. [831] Knox, II. 295. The fight lasted about two hours, and did credit to both sides. The Canadians not only showed their usual address and courage when under cover of woods, but they also fought well in the open field; and the conduct of the whole French force proved how completely they had recovered from the panic of the last autumn. From the first they were greatly superior in number, and at the middle and end of the affair, when they had all reached the field, they were more than two against one. [832] The English, on the other hand, besides the opportunity of attacking before their enemies had completely formed, had a vastly superior artillery and a favorable position, both which advantages they lost after their second advance. [832] See Appendix K. Some curious anecdotes are told of the retreat. Colonel Fraser, of the Highlanders, received a bullet 351 V2 which was no doubt half spent, and which, with excellent precision, hit the base of his queue, so deadening the shock that it gave him no other inconvenience than a stiff neck. Captain Hazen, of the rangers, badly wounded, was making his way towards the gate, supported by his servant, when he saw at a great distance a French officer leading a file of men across a rising ground; whereupon he stopped and told the servant to give him his gun. A volunteer named Thompson, who was near by and who tells the story, thought that he was out of his senses; but Hazen persisted, seated himself on the ground, took a long aim, fired, and brought down his man. Thompson congratulated him. "A chance shot may kill the devil," replied Hazen; and resigning himself again to the arms of his attendant, he reached the town, recovered from his wound, and lived to be a general of the Revolution. [833] [833] Thompson, deceived by Hazen's baptismal name, Moses, thought that he was a Jew. (Revue Canadienne, IV. 865.) He was, however, of an old New England Puritan family. See the Hazen genealogy in Historic-Genealogical Register, XXXIII. The English lost above a thousand, or more than a third of their whole number, killed, wounded, and missing. [834] They carried off some of their wounded, but left others behind; and the greater part of these were murdered, scalped, and mangled by the Indians, all of whom were converts from the mission villages. English writers put the French loss at two thousand and upwards, which is no doubt a gross exaggeration. Lévis declares 352 V2 that the number did not exceed six or eight hundred; but afterwards gives a list which makes it eight hundred and thirty-three. [834] Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing, signed J. Murray. Murray had left three or four hundred men to guard Quebec when the rest marched out; and adding them to those who had returned scathless from the fight, he now had about twenty-four hundred rank and file fit for duty. Yet even the troops that were rated as effective were in so bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons." That worthy soldier, commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad, enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's victory. In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance. "We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we could be." At first there was some drunkenness and some plundering of private houses; but Murray stopped the one by staving the rum-barrels of the sutlers, and the other by hanging the chief offender. Within three days order, subordination, hope, and almost confidence were completely restored. Not a man was idle. The troops left their barracks and lay in tents close to their respective alarm posts. On the open space by St. Louis Gate a crowd of convalescents were busy in filling sand-bags to strengthen the defences, while the sick and wounded in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon. The ramparts 353 V2 were faced with fascines, of which a large stock had been provided in the autumn; chevaux-de-frise were planted in exposed places; an outwork was built to protect St. Louis Gate; embrasures were cut along the whole length of the walls; and the French cannon captured when the town was taken were planted against their late owners. Every man was tasked to the utmost of his strength; and the garrison, gaunt, worn, besmirched with mud, looked less like soldiers than like overworked laborers. The conduct of the officers troubled the spirit of Sergeant Johnson. It shocked his sense of the fitness of things to see them sharing the hard work of the private men, and he thus gives utterance to his feelings: "None but those who were present on the spot can imagine the grief of heart the soldiers felt to see their officers yoked in the harness, dragging up cannon from the Lower Town; to see gentlemen, who were set over them by His Majesty to command and keep them to their duty, working at the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade." The effect, however, was admirable. The spirit of the men rose to the crisis. Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for it now by unconquerable resolution and exhaustless fertility of resource. Deserters said that Lévis would assault the town; and the soldiers replied: "Let him come on; he will catch a Tartar." Lévis and his army were no less busy in digging 354 V2 trenches along the stony back of the Buttes-à-Neveu. Every day the English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec, and May was well advanced before they could plant a single gun to reply. Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily expected from the river below. In the autumn Lévis, with a view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspé, and which therefore might reach him as soon as navigation opened. The arrival of these vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and, on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first, Lévis would be forced to raise the siege. Thus each side watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more intense; and the English presently descried signals along the shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving up the St. Lawrence. Meantime, while doing their best to compass each other's destruction, neither side forgot the courtesies of war. Lévis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded with a Cheshire cheese, and Lévis rejoined with a present of partridges. 355 V2 Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the Basin beating up towards the town. Murray started from his revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediately on Cape Diamond. [835] The halyards being out of order, a sailor climbed the staff and drew up the flag to its place. The news had spread; men and officers, divided between hope and fear, crowded to the rampart by the Chateau, where Durham Terrace now overlooks the St. Lawrence, and every eye was strained on the approaching ship, eager to see whether she would show the red flag of England or the white one of France. Slowly her colors rose to the mast-head and unfurled to the wind the red cross of St. George. It was the British frigate "Lowestoffe." She anchored before the Lower Town, and saluted the garrison with twenty-one guns. "The gladness of the troops," says Knox, "is not to be expressed. Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapet 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 load and fire for a considerable time. In short, the general satisfaction 356 V2 is not to be conceived, except by a person who had suffered the extremities of a siege, and been destined, with his brave friends and countrymen, to the scalping-knives of a faithless conqueror and his barbarious allies." The "Lowestoffe" brought news that a British squadron was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and would reach Quebec in a few days. [835] Thompson in Revue Canadienne, IV. 866. Lévis, in ignorance of this, still clung to the hope that French ships would arrive strong enough to overpower the unwelcome stranger. His guns, being at last in position, presently opened fire upon a wall that was not built to bear the brunt of heavy shot; but an artillery better and more numerous than his own almost silenced them, and his gunners were harassed by repeated sallies. The besiegers had now no real chance of success unless they could carry the place by storm, to which end they had provided abundant scaling-ladders as well as petards to burst in the gates. They made, however, no attempt to use them. A week passed, when, on the evening of the fifteenth, the ship of the line "Vanguard" and the frigate "Diana" sailed into the harbor; and on the next morning the "Diana" and the "Lowestoffe" passed the town to attack the French vessels in the river above. These were six in all,—two frigates, two smaller armed ships, and two schooners; the whole under command of the gallant Vauquelin. He did not belie his reputation; fought his ship with persistent bravery till his ammunition was spent, refused even then to strike his flag, and being 357 V2 made prisoner, was treated by his captors with distinguished honor. The other vessels made little or no resistance. One of them threw her guns overboard and escaped; the rest ran ashore and were burned. The destruction of his vessels was a death-blow to the hopes of Lévis, for they contained his stores of food and ammunition. He had passed the preceding night in great agitation; and when the cannonade on the river ceased, he hastened to raise the siege. In the evening deserters from his camp told Murray that the French were in full retreat; on which all the English batteries opened, firing at random through the darkness, and sending cannon-balls en ricochet, bowling by scores together, over the Plains of Abraham on the heels of the retiring enemy. Murray marched out at dawn of day to fall upon their rear; but, with a hundred and fifty cannon bellowing behind them, they had made such speed that, though he pushed over the marsh to Old Lorette, he could not overtake them; they had already crossed the river of Cap-Rouge. Why, with numbers still superior, they went off in such haste, it is hard to say. They left behind them thirty-four cannon and six mortars, with petards, scaling-ladders, tents, ammunition, baggage, intrenching tools, many of their muskets, and all their sick and wounded. The effort to recover Quebec did great honor to the enterprise of the French; but it availed them nothing, served only to waste resources that seemed already at the lowest ebb, and gave fresh opportunity 358 V2 of plunder to Cadet and his crew, who failed not to make use of it. After the battle of Ste.-Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse" to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent to England. The British public were taken by surprise. "Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole. "America was like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a sudden reading our book backwards." Ten days passed, and then came word that the siege was raised and that the French were gone; upon which Walpole wrote to General Conway: "Well, Quebec is come to life again. Last night I went to see the Holdernesses. I met my Lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a Manx horse, thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily. Mr. Milbank was walking by himself in ovation after the car, and they were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner. The whole procession returned with me; and from the Countess's dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying, 'God bless the good news!' These are all the particulars I know of the siege. My Lord would have showed me the journal; but we amused ourselves much better in going to eat peaches from the new Dutch stoves [hot-houses]." Note.—On the battle of Ste.-Foy and the subsequent siege, Lévis, Guerre du Canada. Relation de la seconde Bataille de Québec et du Siége de cette Ville (there are several copies of this paper, with different titles and some variation). Murray to Amherst, 30 April, 1760. Murray, Journal kept at Quebec from Sept. 18, 1759, to May 17, 1760 (Public Record Office, America and West Indies, XCIX.). Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760. Letter 359 V2 from an Officer of the Royal Americans at Quebec, 24 May, 1760 (in London Magazine and several periodical papers of the time). Fraser, Journal (Quebec Hist. Soc.); Johnstone, Campaign of 1760 (Ibid.). Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Siége de Québec, par une Réligieuse de l'H?pital Général (Ibid.). Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, by Sergeant John Johnson. Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Letters of Lévis, Bourlamaque, and Vaudreuil, May, June, 1760. Several letters from officers at Quebec in provincial newspapers. Knox, II. 292-322. Plan of the Battle and Situation of the British and French on the Heights of Abraham, the 28th of April, 1760,—an admirable plan, attached to the great plan of operations at Quebec before mentioned, and necessary to an understanding of the position and movements of the two armies (British Museum, King's Maps). The narratives of Mante, Entick, Wynne, Smith, and other secondary writers give no additional light. On the force engaged on each side, see Appendix K.