How Canada Was Won: A Tale of Wolfe and Quebec

by F. S. Brereton

There was a shout at that, for long ago the men had been made acquainted with Steve's history. But these men of the backwoods were as yet strangers to the majority of the attacking party, who had but lately arrived from England. They had heard many a time of their particular methods of fighting in the forests, of their cunning and of their value as scouts. It did them good to find that these same men could stand in the open and deliver a charge when bullets and round shot were flying, and when there was no cover to be obtained.

"I expect we shall soon have some of our old scouting work now," said Steve that night, as he and Jim and Mac sat under a tent which had been brought ashore, and discussed the action of the morning. "One of the first duties of the general will be to see that the country round about the fortress is clear, for there are many Indians about, and a canoe can easily be paddled across from the mainland. While we are scouting, the troops will be busily engaged in getting the guns ashore and making ready for a proper siege. That will be slow work, and I for one shall not care to take part in it."

Two mornings later our hero was sent for to the tent of Brigadier Wolfe.

"You will at once be attached to my light companies," he said, as Steve saluted. "Your friends will, of course, be with you, and you will do all you can to give instruction. The men had about two weeks' work at Halifax, but are, of course, very inexperienced. They are all young and active, and picked as marksmen."

On the following day, therefore, Steve and his friends walked over to the officer in command of these light infantry companies, and promptly set to work. On his advice the men were at once taken away from the camp, and divided into smaller parties, each of which was under one of the backwoodsmen, for Pete and Mr. Mainwaring had now come ashore. There was dense forest within easy reach, as well as some more open ground, on which, however, it was possible to find cover. And here for hours at a time the men were practised, till they were fairly proficient. Then one half was set to fight the other, the men being roused to such keenness by these methods that they hardly seemed to notice any fatigue.

"They are the fellows who will help us to win this war," said the brigadier a few days later, as he watched them at their work. "But now for my news. The rough seas are delaying the landing of stores, and until they are all ashore we cannot, of course, undertake to lay siege to the fortress. Meanwhile the general has ordered me to march round to the far side of the harbour and erect a battery there. I will take these companies. We start at daybreak to-morrow."

It would be tedious to narrate how Steve and his friends accompanied this expedition, and how, in spite of a galling fire from the batteries and the ships, General Wolfe managed to construct his earth-works and batteries at Lighthouse Point. It was a class of warfare which, like the attack on the cove, was entirely new to them, and all agreed in admiring the persistency and the cool bravery, not to say recklessness, of the soldiers.

That battery, in spite of the heavy fire poured upon it, silenced the French guns, and broke to pieces a battery on Goat Island in the middle of the harbour. Its fire was soon followed by the bellow of the huge siege guns which had now been brought ashore, and very soon the din about the fortress of Louisbourg was such that men were deafened, and Steve had never heard the like of it before. Sorties were delivered, and were promptly met and driven back. The siege was pressed vigorously, shot and shell pouring on the devoted place, while the politest messages passed between besiegers and besieged. Then the Canadians and their Indians outside our lines delivered their attack, an attack which Steve and the light regiments, now employed as scouts, were able to detect in good time and drive off easily.

And so a month passed, a month of endless cannonading, till the fortress was shattered, and the walls and buildings flying in fragments everywhere. The French were in desperate plight, and wisely agreed to surrender, having fought most gallantly. Thus the formidable fortress came into our hands, and Pitt's forward policy began to bring a long-looked for success. We had captured a place for long the greatest menace to our power in America, and with it had taken some six thousand soldiers and sailors, thus reducing the enemy's strength, while it set ten thousand of our own troops free to operate in other quarters. As for the fortress itself, it was of no use to us, and some two years later was torn to pieces and utterly dismantled. Hardly a stone of that fine costly place can be seen to-day.

Steve did not long remain at Cape Breton, for scouts were required at Ticonderoga, and an urgent message had been sent through to General Amherst to ask for a supply. Steve and his friends were sent, therefore, and arrived in the neighbourhood of Fort William Henry, now reconstructed, only to hear the doleful tidings of a defeat, the effects of which required even more than the crowning victory at Louisbourg to counteract. For General Abercromby had made a most hopeless and inexcusable failure of his long projected attack on the French fort at Ticonderoga. Nor was this failure due to want of careful preparation, to unsuitable troops, or to lack of courage. Of the troops there were plenty and to spare. Had the attack been delivered by the same troops again, properly led over ground which had been carefully reconnoitred, there would have been a different result, in spite of the stubborn and wonderful gallantry of the French. But Abercromby made no use of the excellent scouting material which he possessed. He made no use of the few guns dragged to this part with infinite labour, but left them six miles in his rear. He had six thousand troops, all burning to avenge the massacre at Fort William Henry, and he launched his regiments one after another over open ground in a frontal attack upon the chevaux de frise which the French had erected. Time and again gallant souls dashed forward, only to be beaten down and slain by the bullets and cannon of unseen marksmen and gunners. Why, the youngest subaltern, inexperienced in war, would have ordered all further attacks to cease till he had brought up his guns and smashed those formidable but flimsy defences to pieces. Not so General Abercromby. He had shown no lack of astuteness and organising ability up till now. But at this the critical time in the actions of this expedition he ruined all by his helpless and singularly unsuitable tactics, or, rather, by his absolute disregard of the simplest of tactics.