Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest ambition,—Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right is the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to St. Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above the cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north shore of the St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty, steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the foot of the precipice and tide water. Look again how the St. Lawrence turns in a sharp angle at the precipice. Three sides of the city are water,—St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still steeper precipice to the far side. Only the rear of the city is vulnerable; but it is walled and inaccessible.
Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition; but how to win it?
The night of June 28 is calm, warm, pitch-dark, the kind of summer night when the velvet heat touches you as with a hand. The English soldiers of the crowded transports have gone ashore, when suddenly out of the darkness glide fire ships as from an under world, with flaming mast poles, and hulls in shadow, roaring with fire, throwing out combustibles, drifting straight down on the tide towards the English fleet. But the French have managed badly. They have set the ships on fire too soon. The air is torn to tatters by terrific explosions that light up the outlines of the city spires and churn the river to billows. Then the English sailors are out in small boats, avoiding the suck of the undertow. Throwing out grappling hooks, they tow the flaming fire rafts away from their fleet. It is the first play of the game, and the French have lost.
THE SITE OF QUEBEC AND THE GROUND OCCUPIED DURING THE SIEGE OF 1759
Monckton goes ashore south on Point Lévis side next day. Townshend has landed his troops east of the Montmorency on the north shore. It is the second play of the game, and Wolfe has violated every rule of war, for he has separated his forces in three divisions close to a powerful enemy. He is counting on Montcalm's policy, however, and Montcalm's play is to lie inactive, sleeping in his boots, refusing to be lured to battle till winter drives the English off. It is usual in all accounts of the great struggle to find that certain facts have been suppressed. Let us frankly confess that when the English rangers went foraging they brought back French scalps, and when the French Indians went scouting they returned with English scalps. However, manners were improving. Strict orders are given: this is not a war on women; neither women nor children are to be touched. Wolfe posts proclamations on the parish churches, calling on the habitants to stand neutral. In answer, they tear the proclamations down. By July 12 Wolfe's batteries on the south side of the river are preparing to shell the city. A band of five hundred students and habitants rows across from Quebec by night to dislodge the English gunners, but mistaking their own shots for the shots of the enemy, fall on each other in the dark and retreat in wild confusion. Then the English cannon begin to do business. In a single day half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the cathedral and setting a multitude of lesser buildings on fire. In the confusion of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, shrouding the ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip up the river beyond Quebec, but there the precipice of the river bank is still steeper, and Bougainville is on guard with two thousand men. For thirty miles around the English rangers have laid the country waste. Still Montcalm refuses to come out and fight.
The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is failing him, and who sees the season passing, no nearer the object of his ambition than when he came. As he had stormed the batteries of Louisburg, so now he decides to storm the heights of Montmorency. To any one who has stood on the knob of rock above the gorge where the cataract plunges to the St. Lawrence, or has scrambled down the bank slippery with spray, and watched the black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture must seem madness; for French troops lined the intrenchments above the cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built. Below the cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be forded. From sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's cannon boomed from Lévis across the city, from the fleet in mid channel, from the land camp on the east side of Montmorency. Montcalm rightly guessed, this presaged a night assault. To hide his design, Wolfe kept his transports shifting up and down the St. Lawrence, as if to land at Beauport halfway to the city. All the same, two armed transports, as if by chance, managed to get themselves stranded just opposite the redoubt below the cliff, where their cannon would protect a landing. Montcalm saw the move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks on the top of the cliff. Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at that time cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the St. Lawrence lay hidden in smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand men were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a rush of the tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated firing, and the cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At that moment Wolfe suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A frightful thunderstorm burst on the river, lashing earth and air to darkness. It was impossible to see five paces ahead or to aim a shot. The cliff roared down with miniature rivulets and the slippery clay bank gave to every step of the climbers slithering down waist-deep in mud and weeds. Powder was soaked. As the rain ceased, Indians were seen sliding down the cliff to scalp the wounded. Wolfe ordered a retreat. The drums rolled the recall and the English escaped pellmell, the French hooting with derision at the top of the banks, the English yelling back strong oaths for the enemy to come out of its rat hole and fight like men. At the ford the men, soaked like water rats, and a sorry rabble, got into some sort of rank and burned the two stranded vessels as they passed back to the east side. In less than an hour four hundred and forty-three men had fallen, the most of them killed, many both dead and wounded, into the hands of the Indian scalpers.
One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night. A month had passed. He had accomplished worse than nothing. In another month the fleet must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid autumn storms. Fragile at all times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and of chagrin, and those officers over whose head he had been promoted did not spare their criticisms, their malice. It is so easy to win battles of life and war in theory.
As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won. Still bad news had come from the west. Niagara had fallen before the English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were abandoned to Amherst. Nothing now barred the English advance down the Richelieu to Montreal. Montcalm dispatches Lévis to Montreal with eight hundred men.