M. de Vaudreuil was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork with the Intendant and with some other persons. I suspected they were busy drafting the articles for a general capitulation, and I entered the house, where I had only time to see the Intendant with a pen in his hand writing upon a sheet of paper, when M. de Vaudreuil told me I had no business there. Having answered him that what he said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath, to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependency for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had been expended. On leaving the house, I met M. Dalquier, an old, brave, downright honest man, commander of the regiment of Bearn, with the true character of a good officer—the marks of Mars all over his body. I told him it was being debated within the house, to give up Canada to the English by a capitulation, and I hurried him in to stand up for the King’s cause, and advocate the welfare of his country. I then quitted the hornwork to join Poularies at the Ravine[S] of Beauport; but having met him about three or four hundred paces from the hornwork, on his way to it, I told him what was being discussed there. He answered me, that sooner than consent to a capitulation, he would shed the last drop of his blood. He told me to look on his table and house as my own, advised me to go there directly to repose myself, and clapping spurs to his horse, he flew like lightning to the hornwork.
As Poularies was an officer of great bravery, full of honour and of rare merit, I was then certain that he and Dalquier would break up the measures of designing men. Many motives induced me to act strenuously for the good of the service; amongst others, my gratitude for the Sovereign who had given me bread; also, my affection and inviolable friendship for M. de Levis in his absence, who was now Commander-in-Chief of the French armies in Canada by the death of M. de Montcalm. I continued sorrowfully jogging on to Beauport, with a very heavy heart for the loss of my dear friend, M. de Montcalm, sinking with weariness and lost in reflection upon the changes which Providence had brought about in the space of three or four hours.
Poularies came back to his lodgings at Beauport about two in the afternoon, and he brought me the agreeable news of having converted the project of a capitulation into a retreat to Jacques-Cartier, there to wait the arrival of M. de Levis; and they despatched a courier immediately to Montreal to inform him of our misfortune at Quebec, which, to all appearance, would not have happened to us if M. de Vaudreuil had not sent him away, through some political reason, to command there, without troops except those who were with M. de Bourlamarque at L’Isle aux Noix—an officer of great knowledge. The departure of the army was agreed upon to be at night, and all the regiments were ordered to their respective encampments until further orders. The decision for a retreat was to be kept a great secret, and not even communicated to the officers. I passed the afternoon with Poularies, hoping each moment to receive from Montreuil—Major-General of the army—the order of the retreat for the regiment Royal Roussillon; but having no word of it at eight o’clock in the evening, and it being a dark night, Poularies sent his Adjutant to M. de Vaudreuil to receive his orders for the left. Poularies instantly returned to inform him that the right of our army was gone away with M. de Vaudreuil without his having given any orders concerning the retreat, and that they followed the highway to the hornwork. Castaigné, his Adjutant, could give no further account of this famous retreat, only that all the troops on our right were marched off. It can be easily imagined how much we were confounded by this ignorant and stupid conduct, which can scarce appear credible to the most ignorant military man.
Poularies sent immediately to inform the post next to his regiment of the retreat, with orders to acquaint all the left of it, from post to post, between Beauport and the Sault de Montmorency.
I then set out with him and his regiment, following those before us as the other posts to our left followed us, without any other guides, orders or instructions with regard to the roads we should take, or where we should go to; this was left to chance, or at least was a secret which M. de Vaudreuil kept to himself in petto. It was a march entirely in the Indian manner; not a retreat, but a horrid, abominable flight, a thousand times worse than that in the morning upon the heights of Abraham, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to destroy and cut all our army to pieces. Except the regiment Royal Roussillon, which Poularies, always a rigid and severe disciplinarian, kept together in order, there were not to be seen thirty soldiers together of any other regiment. They were all mixed, scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army was at their heels. There never was a more favourable position to make a beautiful, well-combined retreat, in bright day, and in sight of the English Army looking at us, without having the smallest reason to fear anything within their power to oppose it, as I had obtained a perfect knowledge of the locale from Beauport to the Sault de Montmorency during some months that I was there constantly with M. de Levis and M. de Montcalm. I thought myself in a position to foretell to Poularies the probable order of retreat, and the route which would be assigned to each regiment for their march to the Lorette village. I was greatly deceived, and indeed could never have foreseen the route which our entire army followed to reach Lorette, and which prolonged our march prodigiously for the centre of our army, and still more for our left at the Sault de Montmorency. There is a highway in a straight line from the Sault de Montmorency to Lorette, which makes a side of a triangle formed by another highway from the Sault to Quebec, and by another road from Lorette to the hornwork, which formed the base. In the highway from the Sault to the hornwork there are eight or nine cross roads of communication from it to the road from the Sault to Lorette, which are shorter as they approach to the point of the angle at the Sault. Thus it was natural to believe that our army, being encamped all along the road from the Sault to the hornwork, each regiment would have taken one of these cross roads, the nearest to his encampment, in order to take the straight road from the Sault to Lorette, instead of coming to the hornwork to take there the road from Quebec to Lorette, by which the left had double the distance to march, besides being more liable by approaching the hornwork so near to the English, to make them discover the retreat.
The army, by this operation, would have arrived all at the same time in the road from the Sault to Lorette by the difference in the length of these cross roads, and would have naturally formed a column all along that road; and as it was not a forced retreat, they had the time from twelve at noon until eight at night to send off all the baggage by cross roads to Lorette, without the English perceiving it; but supposing them even fully aware of our design, which might have been executed in open day, they no way could disturb our operations without attacking the hornwork, and attempting the passage of the river St. Charles—a very difficult and dangerous affair—where they might be easily repulsed, exposing themselves in a moment to lose the fruits of their victory, without enjoying it; and consequently they would have been insane had they ventured on such a rash enterprise. Instead of these wise measures, which common sense alone might have dictated, tents, artillery, the military stores, baggage, and all other effects, were left as a present to the English; the officers saved only a few shirts, or what they could carry in their pockets: the rest was lost. In fact, it would appear, by this strange conduct, that a class of men there, from interested views, were furiously bent on giving up the colony to the English, so soon as they could have a plausible pretext to colour their designs,—by lopping off gradually all the means possible to defend it any longer. M. de Vaudreuil had still other kind offices in reserve for the English. He wrote to de Ramsay, King’s Lieutenant and Commander in Quebec,[T] as soon as the retreat was decided:—“That he might propose a capitulation for the town eight-and-forty hours after the departure of our army from our camp at Beauport, upon the best conditions he could obtain from the English.” We ran along in flight all night; and at daybreak M. de Bougainville, with his detachment, joined us near Cap Rouge. In the evening, our army arrived at Pointe-aux-Trembles—five leagues from Quebec—where it passed the night, and next day came to Jacques-Cartier. The English had so little suspicion of our retreat, seeing our tents standing without any change at our camp, that Belcour—an officer of La Rochebaucourt’s cavalry—having returned to it with a detachment, two days after our flight, he found everything the same as when we left it. He went into the hornwork with his detachment, and fired the guns (pointed) at the heights of Abraham towards the English camp, which greatly alarmed them.
FINIS.
[The remainder of the manuscript alludes more particularly to the campaign conducted by Chevalier de Levis, which ended, in 1760, by the capitulation of Montreal.]
ADDENDA.
Extract of the Register of Marriages, Baptisms and Deaths of the French Cathedral at Quebec, for 1759:—
“L’an mil sept cens cinquante-neuf, le quatorzième du mois de Septembre, a été inhumé dans l’Eglise des Religieuses Ursulines de Québec, haut et puissant Seigneur Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm, Lieutenant Général des armées du Roy, Commandeur de l’ordre Royal et militaire de St. Louis, Commandant en chef des troupes de terre en l’Amérique Septentrionale, décédé le même jour de ses blessures au combat de la veille, muni des sacrements qu’il a reçus avec beaucoup de piété et de Religion. Etoient présents à son inhumation MM. Resche, Cugnet et Collet, chanoines de la Cathédrale, M. de Ramezay, Commandant de la Place, et tout le corps des officiers.
(Signé,)
“RESCHE, Ptre. Chan.
“COLLET, Chne.”