On his part, Wolfe made several futile attacks upon the Beauport redoubts. The position was, however, too strong for him to master, and in one assault (July 31) he lost half of his landing party—nearly five hundred killed, wounded, and missing.[34] This continued ill-success fretted Wolfe and at last quite disheartened him, for the season was rapidly wearing on, and winter sets in early at Quebec; moreover, nothing had yet been heard of Amherst. There was, indeed, some talk of waiting until another season. However, more and more British ships worked their way past the fort, and, by making frequent feints of landing at widely separated points, caused Bougainville great annoyance. Montcalm was accordingly obliged to weaken his lower forces by sending reinforcements to the plains west of the city. Thus, while Wolfe was pining, French uneasiness was growing, for the British were now intercepting supplies and reinforcements from both above and below, and Bougainville’s men were growing weary of constantly patrolling fifteen or twenty miles of cliffs.[35]
Meanwhile, let us see how Amherst was faring. At the end of June the general assembled five thousand provincials and sixty-five hundred regulars at the head of Lake George. He had previously dispatched Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand regulars and provincials to reduce Niagara, and Brigadier Stanwix, who had been of Bradstreet’s party the year before, to succor Pittsburg, now in imminent danger from French bush-rangers and Indians who were swarming at Presque Isle, Le Bœuf, and Venango.
Amherst himself moved slowly, it being July 21 before the army started northward upon the lake. Bourlamaque, whose sole purpose was to delay the British advance, lay at Ticonderoga with thirty-five hundred men, but on the twenty-sixth he blew up the fort and retreated in good order to Crown Point. On the British approaching that post he again fell back, this time to a strong position at Isle aux Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain, where, wrote Bourlamaque to a friend, “we are entrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of cannon.”[36] Amherst now deeming vessels essential, yet lacking ship-carpenters, it was the middle of September before his little navy was ready, and then he thought the season too far advanced for further operations.[37] Amherst’s advance had, however, induced Montcalm to defend Montreal, Lévis having been dispatched thither for this purpose.
Prideaux, advancing up the Mohawk, proceeded to Oswego, where he left half of his men to cover his retreat, and then sailed to Niagara. Slain by accident during the siege, his place was taken by Sir William Johnson, the Indian commander, who pushed the work with vigor. Suddenly confronted by a French force of thirteen hundred rangers and savages from the West, who had been deflected thither from a proposed attack on Pittsburg, with the view of recovering that fort, Johnson completely vanquished them (July 24). The discomfited crew burned their posts in that region and retreated precipitately to Detroit. The following day Niagara surrendered, and thus, with Pittsburg also saved, the West was entirely cut off from Canada, and the upper Ohio Valley was placed in British hands. The work of Stanwix having been accomplished by Johnson, the former, who had been greatly delayed by transport difficulties, advanced as promptly as possible to the Forks of the Ohio, and in the place of the old French works built the modernized stronghold of Fort Pitt.[38]
On August 20, Wolfe fell seriously ill. Both he and the army were discouraged. The casualties had thus far been over eight hundred men, and disease had cut a wide swath through the ranks. Desperate, he at last accepted the counsel of his officers, that a landing be attempted above the town, supplies definitively cut off from Montreal, and Montcalm forced to fight or surrender. From September 3 to 12, Wolfe, arisen from his bed but still weak, quietly withdrew his troops from the Montmorenci camp and transported them in vessels which successfully passed through a heavy cannonading from the fort to safe anchorage in the upper basin. Reinforcements marching along the southern bank, from Point Lévis, soon joined their comrades aboard the ships. For several days this portion of the fleet regularly floated up and down the river above Quebec, with the changing tide, thus wearing out Bougainville’s men, who in great perplexity followed the enemy along the cliff-tops, through a beat of several leagues, until from sheer exhaustion they at last became careless.
On the evening of September 12, Saunders—whose admirable handling of the fleet deserves equal recognition with the services of Wolfe—commenced a heavy bombardment of the Beauport lines, and feigned a general landing at that place. Montcalm, not knowing that the majority of the British were by this time above the town, and deceived as to his enemy’s real intent, hurried to Beauport the bulk of his troops, save those necessary for Bougainville’s rear guard. Meanwhile, however, Wolfe was preparing for his desperate attempt several miles up the river.
Before daylight the following morning (September 13), thirty boats containing seventeen hundred picked men, with Wolfe at their head, floated down the stream under the dark shadow of the apparently insurmountable cliffs. They were challenged by sentinels along the shore; but, by pretending to be a provision convoy which had been expected from up-country, suspicion was disarmed. About two miles above Quebec they landed at an indentation then known as Anse du Foulon, but now called Wolfe’s Cove. From the narrow beach a small, winding path, sighted by Wolfe two days before, led up through the trees and underbrush to the Plains of Abraham. The climbing party of twenty-four infantrymen found the path obstructed by an abatis and trenches; but, nothing daunted, they clambered up the height of two hundred feet by the aid of stunted shrubs, reached the top, overcame the weak and cowardly guard of a hundred men, made way for their comrades, and by sunrise forty-five hundred men of the British army were drawn up across the plateau before the walls of Quebec.[39]
SIEGE OF QUEBEC
Montcalm, ten miles away on the other side of the St. Charles, was amazed at the daring feat, but by nine o’clock had massed his troops and confronted his enemy. The battle was brief but desperate. The intrepid Wolfe fell on the field—“the only British general,” declared Horace Walpole, “belonging to the reign of George the Second who can be said to have earned a lasting reputation.”[40] Montcalm, mortally wounded, was carried by his fleeing comrades within the city, where he died before morning. During the seven hours’ battle the British had lost forty-eight killed and five hundred and ninety-seven wounded, about twenty per cent. of the firing-line; the French lost about twelve hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners, of whom perhaps a fourth were killed.[41]