[1177] Sabine collates the various accounts of Wolfe’s death, believing that Knox’s is the most trustworthy. The Memoirs of Donald Macleod (London), an old sergeant of the Highlanders, says that Wolfe was carried from the field in Macleod’s plaid. There is an account of his pistols and sash in the Canadian Antiquarian, iv. 31.
Capt. Robert Wier, who commanded a transport, timed the firing from the first to the last gun, and made the conflict last ten minutes. (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., iii. 307.)
[1178] Doyle’s Official Baronage, iii. 543.
[1179] A view or plan of this post is given in Mémoires sur les affaires du Canada, 1749-60, p. 40.
[1180] Dr. O’Callaghan (N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 400) threw some doubt on this statement, but it seems to be well established by contemporary record (Parkman, ii. 441). The remains of Montcalm were disturbed in digging another grave in 1833, but little was found except the skull, which is still shown in the convent. (Miles’s Canada, p. 415.) See the view in Harper’s Magazine, xviii. 192.
HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM, WITH WOLFE’S MONUMENT.
Dalhousie, when governor, caused a monument, inscribed with the names of both Wolfe and Montcalm, to be erected in the town. (Harper’s Mag., xviii. 188; Canadian Antiquarian, vi. 176.) A monument near the spot where Wolfe was struck down, and inscribed, “Here Wolfe died victorious,” fell into a decay, which relic-seekers had helped to increase (see a view of it in its dilapidated condition in Lossing’s Field-Book of the Revolution, i. p. 189), and was in 1849 replaced by a monument surmounted with a helmet and sword, which is now seen by visitors, and, beside repeating the inscription on the old one, bears this legend: “This pillar was erected by the British army in Canada, A. D. 1849, ... to replace that erected ... in 1832, which was broken and defaced, and is deposited beneath.” (See views in Harper’s Mag., xviii. p. 183.) A view of it from a sketch made in 1851 is annexed. An account of these memorials, with their inscriptions, is given in Martin’s De Montcalm en Canada, p. 211, with the correspondence which passed between Pitt and the secretary of the French Academy respecting an inscription which the army of Montcalm desired to place over his grave in Quebec. (Cf. Martin, p. 216; Bonnechose, Montcalm et Canada, App.; Warburton’s Conquest of Canada, ii., App.; and Watson’s County of Essex, p. 490.)
Cf. also Lossing in Harper’s Mag., xviii. 176, 192, etc.
[1181] The news which reached England from Murray did not encourage the government to hope that Quebec could be saved. Grenville Correspondence, i. 343.