Undismayed, the ardour of his troops, who had only salt rations to live upon, redoubled; and though the French began to invest the city in regular form on the very evening of their victory, it was the 11th of May before their guns opened. Murray had on the walls 132 pieces of cannon, many of which he was unable to handle for want of men; and with all his bravery he must have been compelled to surrender, had not the arrival of Lord Colville's squadron in the St. Lawrence on the 15th, and the destruction of the French fleet there by some of his advanced frigates, so disheartened De Levi that he retired with precipitation, abandoning all his provisions, stores, and artillery, of which Murray instantly possessed himself.
Montreal was the only place of any consequence now held by France in Canada. There General the Marquis de Vaudrieul, governor of the province, commanded all that remained of the French army; and as a portion of General Amherst's plan for its reduction, Colonel Haviland, of the 45th Regiment, with the troops under his command, took possession of an island in Lake Champlain, while General Murray, at the head of all that could be spared from Quebec, came by water to Montreal, which was attacked by 10,000 men, and capitulated in September, 1760, after which the French lost all footing in America, the operations in which were confined to Colonel Grant's expedition against the Cherokees.
On the 10th July, 1762, Murray was gazetted major-general, and in the following year was made Governor of Canada, the conquest of which he completed and brought steadily under British sway. He was made a lieutenant-general in May, 1772, in which year we find him Governor of Minorca, with a salary of £730, and Sir William Draper, K.B., Lieutenant-Governor, with the same allowance. On the 10th February, 1783, he was made full general.
The British Government, anxious to have a naval station further up the Mediterranean than Gibraltar, took possession of Minorca in 1708, and it was confirmed to them by the Treaty of Utrecht, and remained in possession of Britain till 1758, when it was taken by a French fleet and army, after the failure of an attempt to relieve it, which led to the tragic death of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. At the peace of 1763 Minorca was restored to Britain, but in 1782 it was retaken by the Spaniards, after a defence by General Murray which was deemed one of the most brilliant military events of the age.
Long and narrow, it is thirty-two miles by eight in extent, with Mount Toro in its centre, nearly 5,000 feet in height, and has two of the finest harbours in the world, Fornella and Port Mahon, the latter of which is defended by Fort St. Philip, on a rocky promontory of difficult access from the land side.
Murray's garrison in Fort St. Philip consisted of only 2,692 men, of which number, including the 51st Foot (under Colonel Pringle), only 2,016 were regulars, 200 seamen of the Minorca sloop-of-war; and 400 of these were invalids—'worn-out soldiers,' as he states, sent from Britain in 1775, and all were more or less unhealthy. 'The officers of the four regular regiments,' says General Murray, in his defence of himself, 'were in much better health than the privates. This is easily accounted for, for all of them (viz., the British), for eleven years, lived on salt provisions. The quantity of vegetables they consumed and the wine they drank, though it prevented the immediate efforts of scurvy, could not hinder it from tainting the blood. The officers had, until we were invested, lived entirely on fresh provisions, and even after, that we were confined to the Fort, had wine and other refreshments bought at their own expense. They likewise passed the day in the Castle Square, and were only at night confined in the damp air of the souterreins; but even the officers, with all these advantages, began to be infected.' (Political Magazine, 1783.)
On Minorca being menaced by a siege, Murray sent his wife and family to Leghorn, and, preparing for a vigorous defence, shut himself up in Fort St. Philip, for hostilities had now begun with Spain (Scottish Register, 1794). He scuttled and sank the Minorca sloop-of-war at the entrance of the harbour, to prevent the approach of the enemy's ships, and on the 20th of August found himself blocked up by a French and Spanish army, which landed in Minorca without opposition, to the number of 16,000 men, under the Duc de Crillon, who took his title from a village of that name in the Department of Vaucluse, and who subsequently distinguished himself at the great siege of Gibraltar. He was afterwards joined by six French battalions from Toulon, under the Count de Falkenhagen.
So resolute was the defence made by General Murray, that the Duc de Crillon soon began to despair of reducing the place, even with the vast forces he had opposed to it, and secretly offered him (doubtless by order of the King of France) the immense bribe of one million sterling for the surrender of the fortress. Indignant at such an insult, he addressed the following reply to the French commander:
FORT ST. PHILIP, October 16, 1781.
'When your brave ancestor, so celebrated in the "Memoires" of Sully, was desired by his sovereign to assassinate the Duc de Guise, he returned the answer that you should have done when you were charged to assassinate the character of a man whose birth is as illustrious as your own, or that of the Duc de Guise. I can have no further communication with you, but in arms. If you have any humanity, pray send clothing for your unfortunate prisoners in my possession; leave it at a distance to be taken for them, because I will admit of no contact for the future, but such as is hostile to the most inveterate degree.'