When, some hours later, his spirit had breathed his last, Montcalm was buried under the floor of the Ursuline Convent. No workman could be found during the panic to make a coffin, and so an old servant gathered a few boards and nailed them together into a rough box. No bell tolled, no cannon fired a salute as Montcalm was laid to eternal rest.
Not thus was the funeral of the victorious Wolfe. His body was embalmed and borne across the sea to England, where the greatest and most powerful gathered to do him honour and reverence at his funeral in Westminster Abbey.
Yet history has struck the balance. To-day in Quebec, marking the scene of the death-struggle on that fateful September day, a single shaft of stone rises to heaven to commemorate at the same time a victory and a defeat. On the one side is graven the single word "MONTCALM" and on the other "WOLFE."
CHAPTER XV
LÉVIS AND THE NOBLES RETIRE TO OLD FRANCE
It was while Montcalm, high-spirited and valorous, yet lay dying, that Vaudreuil, now quartered on the Beauport Road, called a council of war. Tumult, fear, and confusion reigned. Montcalm, seeing the sands of his life fast running out, despatched a brief reply. "You have a threefold choice," he said: "to fight the English again, to retreat to Jacques Cartier, or to surrender the colony."
Over which choice to make, Vaudreuil hesitated. With Bougainville's troops he could muster 3000 men. These added to the Quebec garrison, the Canadian militia and artillery at Beauport, would give him a force far larger than that which had been mustered by the heroic Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. When he asked the advice of the council of war he found, to his chagrin, that all his officers voted for retreat. "In vain," he reported to the King, "I told these gentlemen that we were superior to the enemy, and should beat them if we mustered. Still I could not at all change their opinion, and my love for the service and for the colony made me subscribe to the voice of the council. In fact, if I had attacked the English against the advice of the principal officers, their ill-will would have exposed me to the risk of losing the battle and the colony also." But the real reason why the officers were against fighting afterwards appeared. It was that they thought their commander, Vaudreuil, unfit to lead them to the fray. So Quebec, which might even now have been prevented from falling into the hands of the English, was left to its fate. Weary and footsore, almost dead for want of sleep, leaving their cannon, tents, and provisions behind them, Vaudreuil and the Beauport army set out for the distant hill of Jacques Cartier, where they were certain of a refuge that very night. Never was such disorder seen before. "It was not a retreat," wrote one of the officers afterwards, "but an abominable flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English but known it, 300 men sent after us would have been sufficient to cut all our army to pieces. The soldiers were all mixed, scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army were at their heels."
But the English, under General Townsend, were not so foolish as to risk the fruits of their victory by making an attempt to pursue the French across the St. Charles River. The people of Quebec, realising that they were deserted by the army, without provisions or munitions of war, and that the defences were insufficient to repulse a bombardment and assault, wished to surrender at once. Seeing that they refused to fight the enemy, the commandant, Ramésay, could only send out a flag of truce to the hostile camp and begin negotiations for capitulation.