Nov. 25th, 1758, Capture of FORT DUQUESNE.
The 1st Battalion, employed on the Western frontiers under General Forbes, played the leading part in the advance against Fort Duquesne on the Ohio, in November, 1758, and led by the gallant Bouquet effected its capture from the French and Red Indians. This brilliant triumph over great physical difficulties was achieved by sheer determination, endurance, and pluck; and the solid value of the victory is thus summed up by the American historian, Parkman:—“It opened the great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies, and relieved her Western borders from the scourge of Indian Wars.” Fort Duquesne, re-christened Fort Pitt, was thereupon garrisoned by a detachment of the 60th, and was destined later to play a prominent part in the subsequent operations.
July 26th, 1758, LOUISBURG.
The 2nd and 3rd Battalions, under Lieut.-Colonel Young and Major Augustine Prevost[[5]] respectively, early in 1758 were ordered to join Generals Amherst[[6]] and Wolfe in the Eastern Field of operations, and they took a prominent part in the capture of Louisburg.
Sept. 13th, 1759, QUEBEC.
These two Battalions were subsequently in 1759 moved up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, where they still further distinguished themselves at Montmorency Falls, below Quebec, on July the 31st, and by their rapid movements and their intrepid courage won from General Wolfe the motto of “Celer et Audax” (Swift and Bold). A still greater opportunity occurred on the 13th of September at the decisive battle of Quebec, where upon the Plains of Abraham the 2nd Battalion, whose Grenadier Company had been the first to scale the heights, covered the left during the battle against a very superior force of Red Indians and French, who made the most determined efforts to assail the flank and rear of Wolfe’s army under cover of the dense bush and rocky ground.[[7]] The 60th thus lost heavily in killed and wounded. The 3rd Battalion played a no less important part by holding in check the enemy, who threatened the rear through the thick woods on the river banks.
1760, MONTREAL.
Amherst, who in 1759 had succeeded Abercromby in chief command of the Army, led the main force in its advance to Montreal, where, on the 8th of September, 1760, the 4th Battalion, a portion of the 1st, and the Grenadiers of the 2nd and 3rd, shared in the glories of the surrender of the French Army under the Marquis de Vaudreuil—a surrender through which the supremacy in America finally passed to the British Crown.
Following up their successes in 1758, under Forbes, Bouquet and the 1st Battalion had by degrees captured or occupied the whole of the French posts west of the Alleghany Mountains, and they were accordingly chosen for the arduous task of defending the various forts established in the unexplored country south of the great lakes. A region embracing thousands of miles of surface was thus consigned to the keeping of five or six hundred men—a vast responsibility for a single weak Battalion garrisoning a few insignificant forts.
In 1763 took place the general and sudden rising of the Indians under Pontiac—a formidable conspiracy, bringing ruin and desolation to the settlers in those wild regions, and even threatening the safety of the Colonies. By surprise or stratagem the Indians, in overwhelming numbers, secured many of the widely scattered posts held by the 60th, murdering some of the slender garrisons and beleaguering others. But the important posts of Fort Detroit upon the Straits joining Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and of Fort Pitt commanding the Ohio River valley, both garrisoned by the 60th under Gladwyn and Ecuyer respectively, were gallantly and successfully held against tremendous odds. The relief of these two important posts were operations of the greatest urgency, and every effort was made to get sufficient troops for this purpose.