Hero Tales from History — Wolfe and Montcalm, The Rival Heroes of Quebec

WOLFE AND MONTCALM, THE RIVAL HEROES OF QUEBEC

More than one hundred years after Champlain returned from France to his beloved Quebec, France and Great Britain were at war.

In America this struggle was called the French and Indian War, because the English colonists had to fight against the French and their Indian allies, who came down from Canada to keep the English out of the country along the Ohio River.

In Europe this strife, in which several other nations took part, was known as the Seven Years’ War.

During this war young George Washington was first heard of.

He was sent into the western wilderness in the dead of winter to carry a message from the English governor of Virginia to the French commander at a fort in western Pennsylvania.

A few years later, General Braddock came over with an army of British regulars to fight the French and their allies in the region where the young messenger had been.

Major George Washington was on the English general’s staff, and saved many of the British regulars after Braddock fell, defeated, near Fort Duquesne, where Pittsburgh now stands.

The British attacked the French also at Louisburg, in Nova Scotia, and at Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain; but the most important point to attack was Quebec, “the Gibraltar of America,” which Champlain had built nearly one hundred and fifty years before.

The general then in military command at Quebec was the Marquis de Montcalm, a true Frenchman, devoted to his king, and to his mother, wife, and children, from all of whom he was separated because of his warm love of country.

[Illustration: THE MARQUIS DE MONTCALM, THE BRAVE DEFENDER OF QUEBEC.

] In his frequent letters to his mother and his wife, Montcalm told all his troubles with the governor of Canada and the Canadian volunteers.

He had brought from France to Quebec an army of regular soldiers.

They looked with scorn upon the French Canadian raw recruits, who seemed about as rude as their Indian neighbors.

The Canadian governor, on his side, saw with jealous eyes the French marquis who had come from Old France to command the Canadian companies along with his own French troops.

It needed rare tact and true love of country for Montcalm to keep friendly with the Canadian governor, who pretended to be the friend of the marquis while secretly turning everybody he could against him.

When the general won a great victory at Oswego, hundreds of miles away, the governor, who was not there, wrote to his friends and the men over him in France about “my” victory and what “I” planned and “I” did with such great success.

But though Montcalm wrote about his trials and troubles to his wife and mother, he managed to keep on good terms with the governor and to prevent an outbreak between the French regulars and the Canadian soldiers and Indian warriors.

General Montcalm knew that the British would attack the French stronghold of Quebec.

To keep this fortress at the narrow point in the St. Lawrence River might mean the saving not only of all Canada, but also of the French forts and territory along the Wabash and Mississippi rivers, more than a thousand miles away to the southwest.

The fortress at Quebec seemed impossible to take, for it was on top of a high, steep cliff looking over the St. Lawrence.

The lower part of the town lay along the level of the river far below, but the town would be of no use whatever to an enemy that could not take the fort, frowning directly overhead.

It seemed that the only way the fort might be reached by an enemy was by way of the St. Charles River, just below the town.

Troops might be taken up this river, and reach Quebec by going a long distance around back of the city.

Montcalm had logs chained together, making a “boom,” and threw that across the St. Charles where it flows into the St. Lawrence.

Then no ship or large boat could enter there and land soldiers behind the fort.

Not only was the St. Lawrence River narrow at Quebec, but there were many rocks in the swift channel below, so that no ship without a skilled pilot could pass up to the town.

Montcalm, however, wishing to make Quebec doubly safe, posted most of his army below the town, to prevent the approach of the enemy.

Meanwhile William Pitt, the British prime minister, decided, as Montcalm had foreseen, that Quebec must be taken.

Pitt made up his mind also that a young British officer named Wolfe was the right man to place in command of the British army, to capture the Canadian fortress.

Wolfe’s father had been a general, and from the age of sixteen the son had been a soldier.

As a colonel under General Amherst at Louisburg, James Wolfe had shown himself so fearless as to be even rash, and so devoted to his duty that he seemed not to care for his own life.

He was so daring and reckless that some one tried to warn the king of England by saying, “That young Wolfe is mad.

” “Mad, is he?

” snapped King George.

“Then I only hope he will bite some others of my generals!

” Colonel Wolfe was as keen and wise as he was brave; so the king appointed him general and commanded him to capture Quebec.

James Wolfe was as devoted to his mother as Montcalm was to his--even more so, for Wolfe had neither wife nor child to divide his affection.

He wrote home often about his army life, his hopes, and his aims.

With all his successes and honors, General Wolfe was a very modest young man.

He sailed up the St. Lawrence with a small army--only nine thousand men.

Of these he wrote to William Pitt: “Our troops are good, and if valor can make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed.

” To the astonishment of Montcalm and the French army and people, the British ships sailed up to the Isle of Orleans opposite Quebec as if there were no dangerous rocks in the rapid river there.

Wolfe had taken some Canadian pilots on board farther down the St. Lawrence, and had threatened to hang them if one of the ships ran upon a rock.

Still, Montcalm told the people that there could be no danger.

The hated English had only run into a trap.

They could go neither upstream nor down, and when winter came their ships would be frozen in the ice and become an easy prey.

So the French general refused to risk an attack.

He decided to play a waiting game and let time and nature fight for France.

On the day when Wolfe’s fleet arrived, a violent storm came up, and several British ships and floats were dashed on the rocks and badly damaged.

After that, Montcalm sent out burning ships to set fire to the English fleet and destroy it.

But Wolfe’s men bravely towed the French fire-ships out of the way, and the only men lost were the Canadian captain in charge of the fire-ships and six of his sailors, who were burned to death.

Next Wolfe tried to enter the country on the Quebec side of the river, near the Falls of Montmorency, where the water falls two hundred and fifty feet over high cliffs.

These falls are so beautiful that some of the English risked being shot by the Canadians in order to see them.

The region between the Falls of Montmorency and Quebec was so well guarded by French and Canadians that Montcalm was sure the English could never get behind Quebec.

He sent word to the British general: “You will, no doubt, demolish the town, but you shall never get inside of it.

” Wolfe answered back: “I will have Quebec if I stay here till the end of November.

” But every English attack failed, and even the brave young commander became discouraged.

He had never known good health, and he was now quite ill.

When he was urged to attack the English general and capture or drive him back, Montcalm said with a smile, “Let him amuse himself where he is.

If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm.

” But the French made another attempt to set fire to the British fleet with seventy rafts, small boats, and schooners.

Again they failed, and the French themselves explained that this was due only to the courage of the English sailors, who swarmed out in little boats to fight the fire before it could do any harm to their fleet.

In August General Wolfe was ill in bed, and it was reported in the British army that he was not likely to live long.

But even while he was so ill, the young commander’s one thought was the capture of Quebec.

On the last day of August he said to his physician that he now had a plan to carry out if he could only live to lead his army in person.

“I know too well that you cannot cure me,” he continued, “but pray make me so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty.

That is all I want.

” In his letter to his mother that day he wrote: “The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can’t in conscience put the whole army to risk.

He has wisely shut himself up so that I can’t get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little or no purpose.

The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a small number of good ones that wish for nothing so much as to fight him, but the wary old fellow avoids an action.

” Early in September Wolfe seemed himself again, though he realized that he had only a few days to live.

The French saw the British fleet pass their fort on the way up the river at night, although the cannon of the fort belched lightnings and bellowed thunder at them.

Montcalm wondered what the English were going to try to do, after all.

“They mean to land somewhere,” he said.

Wolfe did “mean to land somewhere,” and that somewhere was the very place Montcalm did not dream of, a steep cliff back of the town.

When any one spoke of the danger of the capture of Quebec, the French general would shrug and smile and say, “But the English cannot fly!

” One night when it was very dark, sixteen hundred British soldiers came floating down the river in their ships’ boats till they came opposite the town.

Wolfe was with them in person, as he had hoped and prayed to be.

As they were slowly floating, the young commander repeated the familiar lines by Gray, “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.

” “I would rather have written those lines,” he said with deep feeling, “than take Quebec to-morrow!

” As their boats stole in to the shore, a sentinel called out in French, “Who goes there?

” “France,” answered a voice in French.

“What regiment?

” “The Queen’s,” again in good French, by a Scotchman who had seen service in France.

A little later another sentryman challenged them.

“What is that?

” The Scotchman whispered, “Provision boats.

_Sh!

_ the English will hear us!

” In this way they reached a point at the foot of the steep cliff.

Twenty-four men started to climb up where it seemed impossible.

As they kept on, others started up after them.

Then came others, General Wolfe among the number.

In a short time quite a large company, in red coats and Scotch kilts, had reached the top and dragged several small cannon after them.

The French felt so safe from attack that the small guard on the Plains of Abraham, as the level top was called, was taken by surprise and easily overcome.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.

_From the painting by Alonzo Chappel_] An alarm spread.

A Frenchman on horseback came dashing over to Montcalm’s headquarters, gasping: “The English--on the Plains of Abraham!

” There was a great fight on top of that cliff.

Wolfe was seen here--there--everywhere!

But before the British drove the French back, the young general had fallen--shot three times.

“Shall I go for a surgeon?

” asked an Englishman.

“There’s no need,” Wolfe whispered.

“It’s all over with me.

” A little later a man shouted, “See how they run!

” “Who run?

” repeated Wolfe, opening his eyes.

“The enemy, sir.

They are giving way everywhere!

” Wolfe roused up long enough to send a brief order to the next in command, telling him just how to go ahead and capture the fort.

Then he lay down wearily, smiling as he closed his eyes.

“Now God be praised, I shall die in peace,” he said.

The French hero of Quebec also was shot through the body in that last short fight.

“How long have I to live?

” he asked.

“Not more than twelve hours,” said the surgeon in charge.