Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 25, Part 2

That night Lieutenant Meech, with forty New England rangers, landed on the Island of Orleans, and found a body of armed inhabitants, who tried to surround him.

He beat them off, and took possession of a neighboring farmhouse, where he remained till daylight; then pursued the enemy, and found that they had crossed to the north shore.

The whole army now landed, and were drawn up on the beach.

As they were kept there for some time, Knox and several brother officers went to visit the neighboring church of Saint-Laurent, where they found a letter from the parish priest, directed to "The Worthy Officers of the British Army," praying that they would protect the sacred edifice, and also his own adjoining house, and adding, with somewhat needless civility, that he wished they had come sooner, that they might have enjoyed the asparagus and radishes of his garden, now unhappily going to seed.

The letter concluded with many compliments and good wishes, in which the Britons to whom they were addressed saw only "the frothy politeness so peculiar to the French."

The army marched westward and encamped.

Wolfe, with his chief engineer, Major Mackellar, and an escort of light infantry, advanced to the extreme point of the island.

Here he could see, in part, the desperate nature of the task he had undertaken.

Before him, three or four miles away, Quebec sat perched upon her rock, a congregation of stone houses, churches, palaces, convents, and hospitals; the green trees of the Seminary garden and the spires of the Cathedral, the Ursulines, the Recollets, and the Jesuits.

Beyond rose the loftier height of Cape Diamond, edged with palisades and capped with redoubt and parapet.

Batteries frowned everywhere; the Chateau battery, the Clergy battery, the Hospital battery, on the rock above, and the Royal, Dauphin's, and Queen's batteries on the strand, where the dwellings and warehouses of the lower town clustered beneath the cliff.

Full in sight lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the St. Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the Montmorenci.

From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was covered by earthworks along the brink of abrupt and lofty heights; and from the river of Beauport to the St. Charles, by broad flats of mud swept by the fire of redoubts, intrenchments, a floating battery, and the city itself.

Above the city, Cape Diamond hid the view; but could Wolfe have looked beyond it, he would have beheld a prospect still more disheartening.

Here, mile after mile, the St. Lawrence was walled by a range of steeps, often inaccessible, and always so difficult that a few men at the top could hold an army in check; while at Cap-Rouge, about eight miles distant, the high plateau was cleft by the channel of a stream which formed a line of defence as strong as that of the Montmorenci.

Quebec was a natural fortress.

Bougainville had long before examined the position, and reported that "by the help of intrenchments, easily and quickly made, and defended by three or four thousand men, I think the city would be safe.

I do not believe that the English will make any attempt against it; but they may have the madness to do so, and it is well to be prepared against surprise."

Not four thousand men, but four times four thousand, now stood in its defence; and their chiefs wisely resolved not to throw away the advantages of their position.

Nothing more was heard of Vaudreuil's bold plan of attacking the invaders at their landing; and Montcalm had declared that he would play the part, not of Hannibal, but of Fabius.

His plan was to avoid a general battle, run no risks, and protract the defence till the resources of the enemy were exhausted, or till approaching winter forced them to withdraw.

Success was almost certain but for one contingency.

Amherst, with a force larger than that of Wolfe, was moving against Ticonderoga.

If he should capture it, and advance into the colony, Montcalm would be forced to weaken his army by sending strong detachments to oppose him.

Here was Wolfe's best hope.

This failing, his only chance was in audacity.

The game was desperate;

but, intrepid gamester as he was in war, he was a man, in the last resort, to stake everything on the cast of the dice.

The elements declared for France.

On the afternoon of the day when Wolfe's army landed, a violent squall swept over the St. Lawrence, dashed the ships together, drove several ashore, and destroyed many of the flatboats from which the troops had just disembarked.

"I never saw so much distress among shipping in my whole life," writes an officer to a friend in Boston.

Fortunately the storm subsided as quickly as it rose.

Vaudreuil saw that the hoped-for deliverance had failed; and as the tempest had not destroyed the British fleet, he resolved to try the virtue of his fireships.

"I am afraid," says Montcalm, "that they have cost us a million, and will be good for nothing after all."

This remained to be seen.

Vaudreuil gave the chief command of them to a naval officer named Delouche; and on the evening of the twenty-eighth, after long consultation and much debate among their respective captains, they set sail together at ten o'clock.

The night was moonless and dark.

In less than an hour they were at the entrance of the north channel.

Delouche had been all enthusiasm; but as he neared the danger his nerves failed, and he set fire to his ship half an hour too soon, the rest following his example.

[713] [Footnote 713: Foligny, _Journal mémoratif.

Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.

1759. Journal du Siége_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell).

] There was an English outpost at the Point of Orleans; and, about eleven o'clock, the sentries descried through the gloom the ghostly outlines of the approaching ships.

As they gazed, these mysterious strangers began to dart tongues of flame; fire ran like lightning up their masts and sails, and then they burst out like volcanoes.

Filled as they were with pitch, tar, and every manner of combustible, mixed with fireworks, bombs, grenades, and old cannon, swivels, and muskets loaded to the throat, the effect was terrific.

The troops at the Point, amazed at the sudden eruption, the din of the explosions, and the showers of grapeshot that rattled among the trees, lost their wits and fled.

The blazing dragons hissed and roared, spouted sheets of fire, vomited smoke in black, pitchy volumes and vast illumined clouds, and shed their infernal glare on the distant city, the tents of Montcalm, and the long red lines of the British army, drawn up in array of battle, lest the French should cross from their encampments to attack them in the confusion.

Knox calls the display "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived."

Yet the fireships did no other harm than burning alive one of their own captains and six or seven of his sailors who failed to escape in their boats.

Some of them ran ashore before reaching the fleet; the others were seized by the intrepid English sailors, who, approaching in their boats, threw grappling-irons upon them and towed them towards land, till they swung round and stranded.

Here, after venting their fury for a while, they subsided into quiet conflagration, which lasted till morning.

Vaudreuil watched the result of his experiment from the steeple of the church at Beauport; then returned, dejected, to Quebec.

Wolfe longed to fight his enemy; but his sagacious enemy would not gratify him.

From the heights of Beauport, the rock of Quebec, or the summit of Cape Diamond, Montcalm could look down on the river and its shores as on a map, and watch each movement of the invaders.

He was hopeful, perhaps confident; and for a month or more he wrote almost daily to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga, in a cheerful, and often a jocose vein, mingling orders and instructions with pleasantries and bits of news.

Yet his vigilance was unceasing.

"We pass every night in bivouac, or else sleep in our clothes.

Perhaps you are doing as much, my dear Bourlamaque."

[714] [Footnote 714: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 27 Juin, 1759. _ All these letters are before me.

] Of the two commanders, Vaudreuil was the more sanguine, and professed full faith that all would go well.

He too corresponded with Bourlamaque, to whom he gave his opinion, founded on the reports of deserters, that Wolfe had no chance of success unless Amherst should come to his aid.

This he pronounced impossible; and he expressed a strong desire that the English would attack him, "so that we may rid ourselves of them at once."

[715] He was courageous, except in the immediate presence of danger, and failed only when the crisis came.

[Footnote 715: _Vaudreuil à Bourlamaque, 8 Juillet, 1759. _] Wolfe, held in check at every other point, had one movement in his power.

He could seize the heights of Point Levi, opposite the city; and this, along with his occupation of the Island of Orleans, would give him command of the Basin of Quebec.

Thence also he could fire on the place across the St. Lawrence, which is here less than a mile wide.

The movement was begun on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when, shivering in a north wind and a sharp frost, a part of Monckton's brigade was ferried over to Beaumont, on the south shore, and the rest followed in the morning.

The rangers had a brush with a party of Canadians, whom they drove off, and the regulars then landed unopposed.

Monckton ordered a proclamation, signed by Wolfe, to be posted on the door of the parish church.

It called on the Canadians, in peremptory terms, to stand neutral in the contest, promised them, if they did so, full protection in property and religion, and threatened that, if they presumed to resist the invaders, their houses, goods, and harvests should be destroyed, and their churches despoiled.

As soon as the troops were out of sight the inhabitants took down the placard and carried it to Vaudreuil.

The brigade marched along the river road to Point Levi, drove off a body of French and Indians posted in the church, and took possession of the houses and the surrounding heights.

In the morning they were intrenching themselves, when they were greeted by a brisk fire from the edge of the woods.

It came from a party of Indians, whom the rangers presently put to flight, and, imitating their own ferocity, scalped nine of them.

Wolfe came over to the camp on the next day, went with an escort to the heights opposite Quebec, examined it with a spy-glass, and chose a position from which to bombard it.

Cannon and mortars were brought ashore, fascines and gabions made, intrenchments thrown up, and batteries planted.

Knox came over from the main camp, and says that he had "a most agreeable view of the city of Quebec.

It is a very fair object for our artillery, particularly the lower town."

But why did Wolfe wish to bombard it?

Its fortifications were but little exposed to his fire, and to knock its houses, convents, and churches to pieces would bring him no nearer to his object.

His guns at Point Levi could destroy the city, but could not capture it; yet doubtless they would have good moral effect, discourage the French, and cheer his own soldiers with the flattering belief that they were achieving something.

The guns of Quebec showered balls and bombs upon his workmen; but they still toiled on, and the French saw the fatal batteries fast growing to completion.

The citizens, alarmed at the threatened destruction, begged the Governor for leave to cross the river and dislodge their assailants.

At length he consented.

A party of twelve or fifteen hundred was made up of armed burghers, Canadians from the camp, a few Indians, some pupils of the Seminary, and about a hundred volunteers from the regulars.

Dumas, an experienced officer, took command of them; and, going up to Sillery, they crossed the river on the night of the twelfth of July.

They had hardly climbed the heights of the south shore when they grew exceedingly nervous, though the enemy was still three miles off.

The Seminary scholars fired on some of their own party, whom they mistook for English; and the same mishap was repeated a second and a third time.

A panic seized the whole body, and Dumas could not control them.

They turned and made for their canoes, rolling over each other as they rushed down the heights, and reappeared at Quebec at six in the morning, overwhelmed with despair and shame.

[716] [Footnote 716: _Événements de la Guerre en Canada_ (Hist.

Soc.

Quebec, 1861).

_Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.

1759. L'Abeille_, II.

No. 14 (a publication of the Quebec Seminary).

_Journal du Siége de Québec_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell).

Panet, _Journal du Siége_.

Foligny, _Journal mémoratif.

Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, by John Johnson, Clerk and Quartermaster-Sergeant to the Fifty-eighth Regiment_.

] The presentiment of the unhappy burghers proved too true.

The English batteries fell to their work, and the families of the town fled to the country for safety.

In a single day eighteen houses and the cathedral were burned by exploding shells; and fiercer and fiercer the storm of fire and iron hailed upon Quebec.

Wolfe did not rest content with distressing his enemy.

With an ardor and a daring that no difficulties could cool, he sought means to strike an effective blow.

It was nothing to lay Quebec in ruins if he could not defeat the army that protected it.

To land from boats and attack Montcalm in front, through the mud of the Beauport flats or up the heights along the neighboring shore, was an enterprise too rash even for his temerity.

It might, however, be possible to land below the cataract of Montmorenci, cross that stream higher up, and strike the French army in flank or rear; and he had no sooner secured his positions at the points of Levi and Orleans, than he addressed himself to this attempt.

On the eighth several frigates and a bomb-ketch took their stations before the camp of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, with his division of Canadian militia, occupied the heights along the St. Lawrence just above the cataract.

Here they shelled and cannonaded him all day; though, from his elevated position, with very little effect.

Towards evening the troops on the Point of Orleans broke up their camp.

Major Hardy, with a detachment of marines, was left to hold that post, while the rest embarked at night in the boats of the fleet.

They were the brigades of Townshend and Murray, consisting of five battalions, with a body of grenadiers, light infantry, and rangers,--in all three thousand men.

They landed before daybreak in front of the parish of L'Ange Gardien, a little below the cataract.

The only opposition was from a troop of Canadians and Indians, whom they routed, after some loss, climbed the heights, gained the plateau above, and began to intrench themselves.

A

company of rangers, supported by detachments of regulars, was sent into the neighboring forest to protect the parties who were cutting fascines, and apparently, also, to look for a fording-place.

Lévis, with his Scotch-Jacobite aide-de-camp, Johnstone, had watched the movements of Wolfe from the heights across the cataract.

Johnstone says that he asked his commander if he was sure there was no ford higher up on the Montmorenci, by which the English could cross.

Lévis averred that there was none, and that he himself had examined the stream to its source; on which a Canadian who stood by whispered to the aide-de-camp: "The General is mistaken; there is a ford."

Johnstone told this to Lévis, who would not believe it, and so browbeat the Canadian that he dared not repeat what he had said.

Johnstone, taking him aside, told him to go and find somebody who had lately crossed the ford, and bring him at once to the General's quarters; whereupon he soon reappeared with a man who affirmed that he had crossed it the night before with a sack of wheat on his back.

A detachment was immediately sent to the place, with orders to intrench itself, and Repentigny, lieutenant of Lévis, was posted not far off with eleven hundred Canadians.

Four hundred Indians passed the ford under the partisan Langlade, discovered Wolfe's detachment, hid themselves, and sent their commander to tell Repentigny that there was a body of English in the forest, who might all be destroyed if he would come over at once with his Canadians.

Repentigny sent for orders to Lévis, and Lévis sent for orders to Vaudreuil, whose quarters were three or four miles distant.

Vaudreuil answered that no risk should be run, and that he would come and see to the matter himself.

It was about two hours before he arrived; and meanwhile the Indians grew impatient, rose from their hiding-place, fired on the rangers, and drove them back with heavy loss upon the regulars, who stood their ground, and at last repulsed the assailants.

The Indians recrossed the ford with thirty-six scalps.

If Repentigny had advanced, and Lévis had followed with his main body, the consequences to the English might have been serious; for, as Johnstone remarks, "a Canadian in the woods is worth three disciplined soldiers, as a soldier in a plain is worth three Canadians."

Vaudreuil called a council of war.

The question was whether an effort should be made to dislodge Wolfe's main force.

Montcalm and the Governor were this time of one mind, and both thought it inexpedient to attack, with militia, a body of regular troops whose numbers and position were imperfectly known.

Bigot gave his voice for the attack.

He was overruled, and Wolfe was left to fortify himself in peace.

[717] [Footnote 717: The above is from a comparison of the rather discordant accounts of Johnstone, the _Journal tenu à l'Armée,_ the _Journal_ of Panet, and that of the Hartwell Library.

The last says that Lévis crossed the Montmorenci.

If so, he accomplished nothing.

This affair should not be confounded with a somewhat similar one which took place on the 26th.

] His occupation of the heights of Montmorenci exposed him to great risks.

The left wing of his army at Point Levi was six miles from its right wing at the cataract, and Major Hardy's detachment on the Point of Orleans was between them, separated from each by a wide arm of the St. Lawrence.

Any one of the three camps might be overpowered before the others could support it; and Hardy with his small force was above all in danger of being cut to pieces.

But the French kept persistently on the defensive; and after the failure of Dumas to dislodge the English from Point Levi, Vaudreuil would not hear of another such attempt.

Wolfe was soon well intrenched; but it was easier to defend himself than to strike at his enemy.

Montcalm, when urged to attack him, is said to have answered: "Let him amuse himself where he is.

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

His late movement, however, had a discouraging effect on the Canadians, who now for the first time began to desert.

His batteries, too, played across the chasm of Montmorenci upon the left wing of the French army with an effect extremely annoying.

The position of the hostile forces was a remarkable one.

They were separated by the vast gorge that opens upon the St. Lawrence; an amphitheatre of lofty precipices, their brows crested with forests, and their steep brown sides scantily feathered with stunted birch and fir.

Into this abyss leaps the Montmorenci with one headlong plunge of nearly two hundred and fifty feet, a living column of snowy white, with its spray, its foam, its mists, and its rainbows; then spreads itself in broad thin sheets over a floor of rock and gravel, and creeps tamely to the St. Lawrence.

It was but a gunshot across the gulf, and the sentinels on each side watched each other over the roar and turmoil of the cataract.

Captain Knox, coming one day from Point Levi to receive orders from Wolfe, improved a spare hour to visit this marvel of nature.

"I had very nigh paid dear for my inquisitiveness; for while I stood on the eminence I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when, throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern extremity of their breastwork to fire at me.

This obliged me to retire as fast as I could out of his reach, and, making up to the sentry to thank him for his attention, he told me the fellow had snapped his piece twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan at the instant I turned away from the Fall."

Another officer, less fortunate, had a leg broken by a shot from the opposite cliffs.