“We stood gazing for some time up the river in an inexpressible state of anxiety, until the sails became clearly visible, and we knew they were the advance ships of the English fleet! It is impossible to describe the scene which followed. Men and officers leapt on to the ramparts facing the French army, and, waving their hats, gave vent for upwards of an hour to hurrahs and shouts of delight. We had suffered much during the siege, and our deliverance was therefore doubly welcome.”
The news was greeted in England with almost equal enthusiasm.
“Happy, happy day!” wrote Pitt. “My joy and satisfaction are beyond all expression.”
But still, though forced to raise the siege, having lost their two solitary ships, and obliged to retire once more to Montreal, the remaining handful of French soldiers and Canadians would not yield. Under the influence of a fixed idea these last defenders of Canada seemed literally to have gone mad. Three English armies of forty thousand men surrounded General Levis and his three thousand six hundred soldiers who had taken refuge in Montreal. Montreal was an open town, having round it only a low wall, originally intended to defend it from the attacks of the savages. Of course all idea of defence was impossible. Vaudreuil consented therefore to capitulate.
But Levis, indignant at a clause in the capitulation in which General Amherst refused the honours of war to his heroic troops, would not lay down his sword, and retired with two thousand men to the Island of St. Helen; and only upon the Governor Vaudreuil’s formal command did he at last yield, and laid down his arms on September 8th, 1760, protesting to the last against the treatment of the French troops, who, he declared, “merited more attention from Monsieur de Vaudreuil, and more esteem from General Amherst.”
Thus this terrible war, which had caused such a fearful sacrifice of human life, and such great suffering, was over. The unhappy French soldiers were sent on board English ships, and, in the midst of one of the most terrific storms on record, bade adieu to the land they had fought so bravely to retain for their own. But they left behind them a reputation which, as time goes on, and events are seen through the halo of the past, grows in magnitude. England herself glories in having vanquished such almost unconquerable defenders of the soil; and their beloved General Montcalm lies in no unhonoured grave. In raising a monument to their own victorious Hero, the conquerors did not forget the great vanquished Hero. Side by side they stand in the fair city of Quebec, telling of noble deeds and spotless fame—“Wolfe and Montcalm. With courage they faced death. History has united them in glory, and Posterity has erected this monument to their memory.” A noble epitaph, for noble men!
ROBERTS & JACKSON, PRINTERS, GRIMSBY.