The city of Quebec when the British entered into possession was little better than a shapeless mass of ruins, having been reduced to that state by the guns of the fleet. The population was thoroughly demoralised, and given over to theft and pillage; liquor was abundant and the British soldier was thirsty; in fact it needed all Murray's firmness to restore any kind of order.[331] In December severe weather began in earnest, and the effects of bad quarters, bad food, insufficient clothing and insufficient fuel speedily made themselves felt. The sentries were relieved every hour, yet it was impossible to keep them free of frost-bite. The Highlanders despite their natural hardihood suffered more than their comrades, the kilt being but a sorry protection against a Canadian winter; and they were only relieved by a supply of long woollen hose knitted for them, perhaps as much for decency's as for charity's sake, by the nuns of the city. Still the men remained cheerful, for they were kept constantly at work cutting fuel and dragging it in sledges to their quarters, an errand on which they set forth always with muskets as well as with axes, from fear of Indians and bushrangers. Nevertheless their sufferings were great. Fifty men were frost-bitten on a single day while employed on this duty; three days later sixty-five more were similarly afflicted, and before Christmas there were over a hundred and fifty cases.[332] This, however, would have been a small matter but for the more deadly scourge that was added to it. The garrison was victualled entirely with salt provisions; it was impossible to procure fresh meat for the men; and scurvy grew and increased until there was hardly a soldier in the ranks, even among those reckoned fit for duty, who was wholly free from the disease.
1760.
With such a plague in his midst Murray might well feel apprehensive for the safety of Quebec against the enemy without the walls, for ever since the British occupation of the city the French had made no secret of their intention to recapture it. Murray had established two fortified posts a few miles to westward of Quebec at Sainte Foy and Old Lorette; while the French had established themselves at St. Augustine, only two days' march from the gates, from which position it was soon necessary to expel them. Petty skirmishes such as this were frequent, but ended always with so easy advantage to the British that the troops began to think themselves invincible. Repeated intelligence, however, still arrived of French designs against Quebec, vague enough at first, but, as the winter wore on, gradually assuming more definite form. Lévis, the ablest officer left to the French since the fall of Montcalm, was in fact straining every nerve to organise and equip a force of overwhelming strength for the purpose. He had full information of the state of Murray's army and knew that he had but to bide his time for scurvy to do the best part of his work for him. At the end of March he heard that half of the British were on the sick-list, and the report was not far from the truth. By the middle of April Murray had barely three thousand men fit for duty, while no fewer than seven hundred were lying in the snow-drifts, waiting till spring should unbind the frozen ground to give them a grave.
April 21.
April 26.
April 27.
On the 17th of April Murray, learning that the preparations of the French were complete, occupied the mouth of Cap Rouge River to prevent a landing at that point. Four days later Lévis set out with about seven thousand men, half of them regular troops, and a fleet of bateaux escorted by two frigates and by several smaller craft. The river was not yet free from ice, the weather was bad, and navigation was difficult; but on the 26th the army, reinforced by the garrisons of several outlying stations to nearly nine thousand men, landed at St. Augustine and marched upon the British advanced posts. The British at once fell back from Cap Rouge and Old Lorette upon Sainte Foy. Lévis followed after them all night, despite the difficulties of half-thawed ice and driving rain and tempest, and at daybreak arrived before Sainte Foy to find every house occupied by the British and their cannon playing on his columns as they emerged from the forest. Murray, warned by the information of a French gunner, who had been picked up half dead from the floating ice in the St. Lawrence, had marched out with half of the garrison to cover the retreat of his advanced parties. The position which he occupied was strong, and Lévis being ignorant of the weakness of his numbers would not venture to attack, but resolved to wait until nightfall and then move round the British left flank. Murray therefore was able to retire in safety to Quebec, while Lévis occupied Sainte Foy and pushed his light troops forward to Sillery.
April 28.
Murray's position now was none of the pleasantest. The fortifications of Quebec were in no condition to withstand an energetic cannonade, and the ground was still frozen so hard that it was impossible for him to throw up entrenchments, as he had long desired, outside the walls. The only alternative open to him was to sally out and fight Lévis, at odds of one against two, and beat him if he could. Murray was young, daring and fired by the example of Wolfe; his army was, as he said, in the habit of beating the enemy;[333] and he had a fine train of artillery. He therefore resolved to go out and fight. Accordingly at half-past six on the morning of the 28th he marched out of Quebec at the head of all the troops that he could muster, a bare three thousand men, with three howitzers and twenty field-pieces, and drew them up on the ground which Montcalm had occupied on the famous 13th of September. The force was formed in one line of two brigades, the right or Burton's brigade consisting, from right to left, of the Fifteenth, Fifty-eighth, second battalion of the Sixtieth, and Forty-eighth regiments; the left or Fraser's brigade of the Forty-third, Forty-seventh, Fraser's Highlanders, and the Twenty-eighth. The Thirty-fifth and third battalion of the Sixtieth were posted in reserve in rear of the centre, while the Light Infantry and the Provincial rangers stood wide on the right and left flanks. The field-guns were distributed in pairs to each battalion.
Moving forward to reconnoitre, Murray perceived that the French line was not yet formed. That Lévis had chosen his ground was clear, for he had occupied two block-houses built by the British above Anse du Foulon at the southern edge of the plateau, as well as a house and a fortified windmill at the northern brink, and had extended his vanguard along the ridge between these two points. But the main body was still debouching in columns from Sillery Wood, a mile or more in rear, and two brigades only were as yet deployed by the block-house to form the French right wing. Thinking the opportunity favourable, Murray ordered an immediate advance; and his whole line moved forward, the men dragging their guns with them in the intervals between battalions. The ground was for the most part still covered with snow, which in some places was piled up in drifts and everywhere soft and sodden with rain; and the tramp of three thousand men soon turned the soil into a sea of mud. Arrived at the ground where Wolfe's army had stood, the line halted, and the guns unlimbering opened so destructive a fire on the French columns that Lévis ordered the battalions of his left to fall back to the woods. The manœuvre was not executed without confusion, and Murray, elated by his apparent success, ordered the line to renew its advance, inclining to its right. This movement, however, brought Burton's brigade on to low ground, where the melting snow was knee-deep and the guns could not be worked with effect. The British Light Infantry attacked the windmill and houses on the French left with great spirit, carried them in spite of a desperate resistance, and pressed on in pursuit of the retreating French. But now the battalions of the French left, no longer checked by the fire of artillery, dashed out of the woods in skirmishing order and falling on the rash pursuers fairly overwhelmed them. Over two hundred of the Light Infantry were killed and wounded, and the few survivors hurrying back in confusion upon Burton's brigade prevented it from firing on the advancing enemy. The French seized the opportunity to reform their broken ranks and the combat was hotly maintained for more than an hour, until ammunition for the British artillery failed, the tumbrils being immovably fixed in the snow-drifts.
On Murray's left his hasty advance was little less disastrous. The block-houses were indeed carried and held for a time, but the French fell back into the woods only to advance again in overwhelming force when the fire of the British artillery failed, and to extend themselves along the British front and flank. The two battalions of the reserve were called up and the fight was maintained with indomitable stubbornness; but with both flanks turned the efforts of the British were hopeless, and Murray gave the word to fall back. The men, though but two in three of them remained unhurt, were furious at the order. "Damn it, what is falling back but retreating!" they said; but there was no help for it. So first the left brigade and then the right retired, cursing as they went. Some of the regiments tried to carry off their guns with them, but finding this impossible owing to deep snow and mud spiked and abandoned them. The French followed in pursuit, hoping to cut them off from the city; but Lévis perceiving the orderliness of the retreat judged it more prudent to recall his troops, and Murray brought back the remnant of his force in safety to Quebec.
So ended the action of Sainte Foy after two hours of stern and bloody work. The loss of the British amounted to a thousand killed and wounded or a full third of the entire force. The Fifteenth, Twenty-eighth, and Highlanders[334] were, after the Light Infantry, the greatest sufferers, but in the attenuated state of the battalions it is probable that in seven out of the ten there fell at least one man in three. The loss of the French was admitted to have exceeded eight hundred. Altogether it was an unfortunate affair, though it cannot be called discreditable to the troops. Murray was misled by overweening confidence in his men and miscalculation of the spirit of the French. His past experience doubtless partly excused the mistake; but even if he had failed to grasp that Lévis was a man who could restore confidence to demoralised troops, he might at least have guessed that he would bring up fresh regiments, who had not learned to fear the red-coats, to meet him. As things were, he sacrificed the advantages of his position and of his superiority in artillery and found himself shut up within the miserable fortifications of Quebec, with his force reduced to twenty-four hundred men, nominally fit for duty, but in reality, to use the expressive words of one of them, "half-starved scorbutic skeletons."