[CHAPTER XXIX.]
1759, 1760.
SAINTE-FOY.
Quebec after the Siege • Captain Knox and the Nuns • Escape of French Ships • Winter at Quebec • Threats of Lévis • Attacks • Skirmishes • Feat of the Rangers • State of the Garrison • The French prepare to retake Quebec • Advance of Lévis • The Alarm • Sortie of the English • Rash Determination of Murray • Battle of Ste.-Foy • Retreat of the English • Lévis besieges Quebec • Spirit of the Garrison • Peril of their Situation • Relief • Quebec saved • Retreat of Lévis • The News in England.
The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and the chill days of a fitful November passed over Quebec in alternations of rain and frost, sunshine and snow. The troops, driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all gathered within the walls. Their own artillery had so battered the place that it was not easy to find shelter. The Lower Town was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls. As you ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left were a mass of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at see-saw among the fallen planks and timbers. [816] Even in the Upper Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped. The Cathedral was burned to a shell. The solid front of the College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-balls, and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered. The church of the Recollects suffered still more. The bombshells that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from the graves beneath. [817] Even the more distant Hôtel-Dieu was pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the halls and chambers. [818]
[816] Drawings made on the spot by Richard Short. These drawings, twelve in number, were engraved and published in 1761.
[817] Short's Views in Quebec, 1759. Compare Pontbriand, in N. Y. Col. Docs., X. 1,057.
[818] Casgrain, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 445.
The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but a shapeless mass of ruins. Confusion, disorder, pillage reign even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of severity every day. Everybody rushes hither and thither, without knowing why. Each searches for his possessions, and, not finding his own, seizes those of other people. English and French, all is chaos alike. The inhabitants, famished and destitute, escape to the country. Never was there seen such a sight." [819]