“Support me,” he said to one of his staff; “let not my brave fellows see me drop.”
“They run, they run,” cried the officer.
“Who run?” asked Wolfe, scarce able to speak.
“The French give way everywhere.”
“What! Do they run already? Now, God be praised, I die happy.”
In the meantime, Montcalm, also mortally wounded, was carried back to the fortress, where panic had seized the French garrison. It was rumoured that the General was killed.
“So much the better for me,” he sighed when he heard of it; “I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”
With his death passed away the ascendancy of France in Canada.
In the siege of Quebec Fraser’s Highlanders took a gallant and important share. They were amongst the troops who landed upon Wolfe’s Cove, as it was afterwards called, and won the Heights of Abraham, and when the French attack was broken, the regiment pursued the fugitives to the very gates of the town into which they were shortly to march.
In the following April when the French, under De Levi, advanced against Quebec, Fraser’s Highlanders, under the command of General Murray, were forced to retire into the city after a severe action. Later on Lord Murray achieved a junction with General Amherst, whose arrival had been so exceedingly tardy.