"Alas!" Batoche would often exclaim, standing over those earthworks, "if the great Marquis had relied upon the walls of Quebec, as he did upon these fortifications, we should still be masters of the country. Wolfe owed his success solely to the imprudence of Montcalm."
In the spring of the following year, Batoche joined the army of the Chevalier de Lévis, and was present at the great victory of Ste. Foye. But the successful retreat of the British army, under Murray, behind the walls of Quebec; the inability of Lévis to press the siege of the city; the gradual disbanding of the French forces throughout the Province, and the final surrender of Vaudreuil, at Montreal, whereby the whole French possessions in America, were ceded to Britain—one of the most momentous events of modern times in its gradual results—forced Batoche to return to his Montmorenci solitude.
He might have gone back to France, if he had been so minded, but after lingering some time in indecision, a circumstance occurred which determined him to fix his abode definitively in the new world. This was the receipt of a letter from his family, informing him of the death of his wife and the utter poverty in which his daughter, a girl of seventeen, was left. The girl herself appended a note stating that she intended to sail by the first occasion to join her father in Canada. The old soldier wrote at once to dissuade her from taking the step, giving the characteristic reason that he did not want her to become a servant of the detested English, but before his letter reached France, the girl landed in Quebec, and thus the course of Batoche's destiny was changed. His daughter was bright, intelligent and good looking, and received at once advantageous offers of situations in several of the best families of the capital, but the old man would not listen to any proposition of the kind.
"Come with me, into the woods," he said to her. "We will live there happily together. I don't want an Englishman to set his eyes upon you. I am still able to work. You will help me. We shall want for nothing."
And he took her into his lonely habitation beside the Falls of Montmorenci, where in effect the two spent a tranquil, easy existence. At the end of three years, the son of a farmer of Charlesbourg fell in love with the girl, and spite of his attachment, Batoche consented to a marriage between them. It was a rude blow when the bride went forth from his cabin to take up her residence in her husband's house, about twelve miles away, but the sacrifice was generously made, and when ten or eleven months later, a grandchild was born to him, Batoche felt that he had received sufficient compensation for his loss.
"Little Blanche will live with me," he said, "and replace her mother."
He did not know how sad was the prophecy that he uttered.