CHAP. aide-de-camp to Lord George Sackville, who commanded fourXXVII. teen British and ten Hanoverian squadrons of cavalry on his right wing, numbering 3,330 sabres, to move "the cavalry" forward towards the left in support. Sackville professed not to understand the orders and, though they were subsequently repeated by two British aides-de-camp, remained motionless. The delay enabled the French army, which in military opinion might have been pulverised,1 to make good its retreat through the inclosures of Minden where cavalry were useless. The French, however, lost over 7,000 killed, wounded, and prisoners, besides forty-three guns and seventeen colours. Of the allied loss of 2,600 the British infantry sustained one-half.

Minden was a victory of the "thin red line" of the English infantry. The inaction of Lord George Sackville during the struggle of the English infantry, notwithstanding that, as Prince Ferdinand reminded him, he was commander-in-chief of the whole British contingent, is one of the mysteries of history. Sackville had been wounded at Fontenoy where, according to the Duke of Cumberland, no lenient judge, he had "shewn his courage".3 The simplest explanation of his conduct is probably the truest, that he was a man whose courage fluctuated and on this occasion failed him altogether, his initial indisposition to act being strengthened by dislike of Ferdinand and reliance on his own influence with Leicester House to protect him against complaints. Ferdinand behaved with selfrestraint; but in his general orders thanking the troops omitted Sackville's name, while he paid a compliment to the Marquis of Granby who led the second line. He wrote to King George requesting Sackville's recall. The king, however, who had in the first instance objected to the appointment of Sackville, had already acted, and a dispatch from Holdernesse® crossed Ferdinand's letter. Meanwhile, London had blazed with bonfires and Granby had become "the mob's hero". As for Sackville, Horace Walpole tells us, "Admiral Byng was not more

1 So also Waddington, Guerre de Sept Ans, iii., 60.

2 Prince Ferdinand to Lord George Sackville, Minden, August 3, 1759, Stopford-Sackville MSS., p. 313.

3 De La Warre MSS., p. 282, Hist. MSS. Comm., 4th Rep., App.

Hardwicke Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,893, f. 216.

August 13, 1759, ibid., f. 227.

6 August 14, 1759, Hist. MSS. Comm., 3rd Rep., App., p. 134.

1759

court.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CANADA.

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unpopular". At his request a court-martial was promised, and CHAP. in the meantime he published an Address to the English Public asking for a suspension of judgement. The charge against him was disobedience to orders. He defended himself with ability, but was overbearing to the witnesses and dictatorial to the On April 5, 1760, he was found guilty and declared "unfit to serve His Majesty in any military capacity whatever". At the close of the year 1758 Pitt was energetically making preparations for a fresh campaign in America. There were to be two lines of attack on Canada; the main one under Admiral Saunders and Wolfe, now a major-general, against Quebec by way of the St. Lawrence, the other along the route prescribed to Abercromby against Quebec or Montreal, entrusted to Amherst. In contrast with the unity of direction given to operations by Pitt were the personal rivalries distracting the cabinet of Versailles. After an interesting sketch of its component personalities, Newcastle's spy summarises the outcome of their "intrigues and cabals". "What is resolved one day," he reports, "is changed the next." But the dominant influence remained with Madame de Pompadour and her pro-Austrian continental policy, artfully stimulated by the empress-queen, who continued to write "her such letters as are suited to flatter her pride and vanity" For Canada France could spare no more than three or four hundred recruits and sixty engineers and gunners, with supplies sufficient for a campaign. These, in seventeen vessels convoyed by three frigates, reached Quebec in May.

On June 26th, 1759, after a three weeks' passage up the river, the English fleet cast anchor off the isle of Orleans, opposite the village of Beauport, an outlying defence below Quebec. It consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, thirteen frigates, and numerous transports and river craft. The troops on board numbered 8,635 men. On the other side was a force numerically superior, behind intrenchments singularly aided by nature. About Quebec the bank of the river was precipitous, while below, earthworks had been thrown up from the falls of the Montmorency, almost opposite the British warships, to the river St. Charles near the city. The defenders in all consisted

1 Versailles, February 20, 1760, Newcastle Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 32,902, f. 290.

XXVII.

CHAP. of 15,000 men, of whom 5,000 were regulars and the rest colonial militia. To these may be added a varying crowd of auxiliary Indians, of doubtful value in actual warfare, perhaps on the average 1,000 in number. Despite his superiority in numbers, the policy of Montcalm was to act on the defensive. While the command of the sea and the river would enable the British to make good their losses, it would prevent the approach of succour to the French. If the defence were protracted, the autumn rains and the winter frosts would do their work, and the colony be freed by the forces of nature from Admiral Saunders as it had been from Admiral Walker in 1711. No resistance was, therefore, offered to the occupation of favourable positions by Wolfe.

After several abortive engagements, Wolfe on August 5 dispatched Brigadier Murray with 1,200 men in boats up the river to embark on the ships of Admiral Holmes, second in command to Saunders, whose squadron lay above the town. This manœuvre contributed largely to his eventual success. Montcalm's second in command, Bougainville, with 1,500 troops was detached from the main force at Beauport to watch Murray's movements. Murray's troops were comfortably housed on the ships of Admiral Holmes, which were allowed to float up and down with the tide. This involved an incessant marching and countermarching on the part of Bougainville's force which exhausted their energies, while it did not prevent occasional raids. Wolfe's feeble constitution, however, began to succumb before disappointment and anxiety. Autumn was approaching; the admirals were anxious to be out of the river before the equinoctial gales; the success of the expedition appeared to be becoming daily more remote. On the 29th Wolfe, then rallying from illness, addressed a letter to his three brigadiers, Monckton, George Townshend, and Murray, suggesting an assault on Quebec by one of three routes, all of them from the side of Beauport. The brigadiers proposed instead an attack above the town, which would cut off Montcalm from supplies by way of Montreal as well as from communication with the French forces opposed to Amherst, who was

1 At the time of Wolfe's arrival about 11,500, reinforced during the campaign by Canadian volunteers. R. Waddington, La Guerre de Sept Ans, ¡¡¡., 274, 310.

1759

Wolfe besIEGES QUEBEC.

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believed to be advancing. Wolfe determined to adopt their CHAP. plan in principle, but he reserved to himself a discretion as to details which improved its effectiveness. They had recommended a landing-place on the north shore twelve miles above Quebec. There he would have at once encountered the detachment of Bougainville, a conflict with which would have weakened his chances of forcing his way into Quebec.1 He reconnoitred the north shore himself, rejected the landing-place of the brigadiers, and fixed upon Foulon, a steep hill about a mile and a half from the town.

On September 3 Wolfe evacuated his camp on the Montmorency and transported his troops to Pointe Levis and the Isle of Orleans. Four days later four thousand of them had been secretly embarked on Admiral Holmes's ships. On the night of the 12th while Wolfe was preparing the real attack, Saunders lying in the Basin of Quebec, directed a fierce bombardment against Beauport, below the city, and threatened a landing. Montcalm massed his troops there to meet him. Holmes's squadron sailed towards Pointe aux Trembles to draw Bougainville westward. The device was successful and distracted the attention of the French. As Wolfe's procession of boats in the early morning of the 13th moved silently down the St. Lawrence, the general relieved the tension of his mind by reciting in a low voice to the officers around him Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard. "I would rather," he ended, “be the author of that poem than take Quebec." The rapidity of the tide carried the boats to a steep ascent below the intended landing-place. Here they found no sentries. Twenty-four volunteers who led the way scaled the heights and surprised the small post at the top of the path from the intended landing-place who had preferred their tents to sentry-duty. The

1 This point is of importance in view of the controversy which has arisen as to whom the capture of Quebec was to be credited. While Stanhope has wrongly attributed "the honour of that first thought to Wolfe alone," Warburton, Conquest of Canada (p. 322), followed by Lieutenant-Colonel Townshend, Military Life of the First Marquess, speaks of "the remarkable plan which Wolfe unreservedly adopted". "The Correspondence between Wolfe and his Brigadiers," published by Doughty (Siege of Quebec, vi., 59, 60), justifies the apportionment of the credit adopted in the text. See further Brigadier Murray's criticism of Wolfe in Townshend MSS., p. 316, Hist. MSS. Comm., 11th Rep., App., pt. iv.

2 General Townshend to W. Pitt, September 20, 1759, ibid., p. 324, Hist. MSS. Comm., 11th Rep., App., pt. iv.

XXVII.

Wolfe drew Monckton the centre,

CHAP. rest of the troops as they landed rapidly followed. up his men in two lines facing towards Quebec. commanded on the right; Wolfe himself was in and on his left Murray. The total force which landed was about 4,000 men, but as the third battalion of Royal Americans, afterwards the 60th Rifles, were posted to guard the landing-place and parties of light infantry were detached for other duties, the total fighting line was reduced to about 3,100. A little before 9 A.M. on September 13th the two armies advanced towards each other. The French were formed in a single long line opposite the British, five regiments of regulars in the centre, with colonial militia at the wings, their numbers variously estimated at from 3,500 to 7,520 men. Both generals, Montcalm on horseback, passed down the front of their troops. The French rushed in some disorder down the slope on the ridge of which they were posted, firing as they advanced. No reply was made until they were within thirty yards. The British then delivered a volley with such deliberation and precision that the French recoiled. Before they could recover, a second volley followed, and they broke and fled, pursued by the British bayonets. At the moment of ordering the charge, Wolfe, already twice wounded, was struck by a bullet in the breast and sank to the ground. He was told that the French were running. "Now," said he, with a smile, "I die contented," and so died.1 Soon after his fall Monckton was severely wounded. The British troops continued their advance until arrested by the French artillery fire from the ramparts. Townshend, who had succeeded to the command, had scarcely reformed his battalions, which had been disordered by the pursuit, when Bougainville with 900 troops appeared in their rear, coming from Cap Rouge, but did not venture an attack. Townshend then intrenched his position, which was at once supplied by Saunders with a number of twenty-four pounders

Montcalm was mortally wounded and died on the following morning. Vaudreuil, the governor-general, abandoned his camp at Beauport in disorderly flight and on the 17th De Ramsay, the commandant of the city, capitulated. On the

1 See a discussion of his last words in Doughty's Siege of Quebec, iii., 208-16. 2 Notes dated September 13 in Townshend MSS., p. 323; also General Townshend to Pitt, September 20, 1759, ibid., p. 325.