On June 1 the fleet began to leave Louisburg. There were thirty-nine men-of-war, ten auxiliaries, seventy-six transports, and a hundred and sixty-two miscellaneous craft, which were manned by thirteen thousand naval seamen and five thousand of the mercantile marine—an aggregate of eighteen thousand, or twice as many as the landsmen under Wolfe.[30] While to the latter is commonly given credit for the result, it must not be forgotten that the victory was quite as much due to the skilful management of the navy as to that of the army, the expedition being in all respects a joint enterprise, into which the men of both branches of the service entered with intense enthusiasm.
The French had placed much reliance on the supposed impossibility of great battle-ships being successfully navigated up the St. Lawrence above the mouth of the Saguenay without the most careful piloting. This portion of the river, a hundred and twenty miles in length, certainly is intricate water, being streaked with perplexing currents created by the mingling of the river’s strong flow with the flood and ebb of the tide; the great stream is diverted into two parallel channels by reefs and islands, and there are numerous shoals—moreover, the French had removed all lights and other aids to navigation. But British sailors laughed at difficulties such as these, and, while they managed to capture a pilot, had small use for him, preferring their own cautious methods. Preceded by a crescent of sounding-boats, officered by Captain James Cook, afterward of glorious memory as a pathfinder, the fleet advanced slowly but safely, its approach heralded by beacons gleaming nightly to the fore, upon the rounded hill-tops overlooking the long thin line of riverside settlement which extended eastward from Quebec to the Saguenay.[31]
The French had at first expected attacks only from Lake Ontario and from the south. But receiving early tidings of Wolfe’s expedition, through convoys with supplies from France that had escaped Saunders’ patrol of the gulf, general alarm prevailed, and Montcalm decided to make his stand at Quebec. To the last he appears to have shared in the popular delusion that British men-of-war could not ascend the river; nevertheless, he promptly summoned to the capital the greater part of the militia from all sections of Canada, save that a thousand whites and savages were left with Pouchot to defend Niagara, twelve hundred men under De la Corne to guard Lake Ontario, and Bourlamaque, with upward of three thousand, was ordered to delay Amherst’s advance and thus prevent him from joining Wolfe. The population of Canada at the time was about eighty-five thousand souls, and of these perhaps twenty-two thousand were capable of bearing arms.[32] The force now gathered in and about Quebec aggregated about seventeen thousand, of whom some ten thousand were militia, four thousand regulars of the line, and a thousand each of colonial regulars, seamen, and Indians; of these two thousand were reserved for the garrison of Quebec, under De Ramezay, while the remainder were at the disposal of Montcalm for the general defence.[33]
The “rock of Quebec” is the northeast end of a long, narrow triangular promontory, to the north of which lies the valley of the St. Charles and to the south that of the St. Lawrence. The acclivity on the St. Charles side is lower and less steep than the cliffs fringing the St. Lawrence, which rise almost precipitously from two to three hundred feet above the river—the citadel cliff being three hundred and forty-five feet, almost sheer. Either side of the promontory was easily defensible from assault, the table-land being only reached by steep and narrow paths. Surmounting the cliffs, at the apex of the triangle, was Upper Town, the capital of New France. Batteries, largely manned by sailors, lined the cliff-tops within the town, and the western base, fronting the Plains of Abraham, was protected by fifteen hundred yards of insecure wall—for, after all, Quebec had, despite the money spent upon it, never been scientifically fortified, its commanders having from the first relied chiefly upon its natural position as a stronghold.
At the base of the promontory, on the St. Lawrence side, is a wide beach occupied by Lower Town, where were the market, the commercial warehouses, a large share of the business establishments, and the homes of the trading and laboring classes. A narrow strand, little more than the width of a roadway, extended along the base of the cliffs westward, communicating with the up-river country; another road led westward along the table-land above. Thus the city obtained its supplies from the interior both by highway and by river.
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE
Entrance to the St. Charles side of the promontory had been blocked by booms at the mouth of that river, protected by strong redoubts; and off Lower Town was a line of floating batteries. Beyond the St. Charles, for a distance of seven miles eastward to the gorge of the Montmorenci, Montcalm disposed the greater part of his forces, his position being a plain naturally protected by a steep slope descending to the meadow and tidal flats which here margin the St. Lawrence. This plain rises gradually from the St. Charles, until at the Montmorenci cataract it attains a height of three hundred feet, and along the summit of the slope were well-devised trenches. The gorge furnished a strong natural defence to the left wing, for it could be forded only in the dense forest at a considerable distance above the falls, and to force this approach would have been to invite an ambuscade. Wolfe contented himself, therefore, with intrenching a considerable force along the eastern bank of the gorge, and thence issuing for frontal attacks on the Beauport Flats—so called from the name of the village midway. Montcalm had chosen this as the chief line of defence, on the theory that the approach by the St. Charles would be the one selected by the invaders; as, indeed, it long seemed to Wolfe the only possible path to the works of Upper Town.
Westward of the city, upon the table-land, Bougainville headed a corps of observation, supposed continually to patrol the St. Lawrence cliff-tops and keep communications open with the interior; but this precaution failed in the hour of need. The height of Point Lévis, across the river from the town, on the south bank, was unoccupied. Montcalm had wished to fortify this vantage-point, and thus block the river from both sides, but Vaudreuil had overruled him, and the result was fatal. Other weak points in the defence were divided command and the scarcity of food and ammunition, occasioned largely by Bigot’s rapacious knavery.
On June 26 the British fleet anchored off the Isle of Orleans, thus dissipating the fond hopes of the French that some disaster might prevent its approach. Three days later Wolfe’s men, now encamped on the island at a safe distance from Montcalm’s guns, made an easy capture of Point Lévis, and there erected batteries which commanded the town. British ships were, in consequence, soon able to pass Quebec, under cover of the Point Lévis guns, and destroy some of the French shipping anchored in the upper basin; while landing parties harried the country to the west, forcing habitants to neutrality and intercepting supplies. Frequently the British forces were, upon these various enterprises, divided into three or four isolated divisions, which might have been roughly handled by a venturesome foe. But Montcalm rigidly maintained the policy of defence, his only offensive operations being the unsuccessful dispatch of fire-ships against the invading fleet.