Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Sir Jeffery Amherst.

To whom Montreal surrendered 1760.]

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 pa.s.sage 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 sh.o.r.e 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 quant.i.ty 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL HOSPITAL]

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 a.s.sault, 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 fort.i.tude 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 fort.i.tude may be found in a menu he presents in a letter to Levis--

"Pet.i.ts 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.es 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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, pa.s.sing 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l-fire, lad!" was the reply.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN JAMES COOK (Piloted Wolfe's Army up the Harbour of Quebec)]

From boat to boat the General's eye pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion," 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 sh.o.r.e. 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, sh.e.l.ls, and carca.s.ses 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, pa.s.sed 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 st.u.r.dy 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Admiral Earl St. Vincent_ _from a portrait by Hoppner_.]

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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.nable fire without being able to return a shot. Minute after minute pa.s.sed. 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 sh.o.r.e.

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, G.o.d be praised, I will die in peace!"

CHAPTER XV