When the flag of Britain supplanted the emblem of France on the ramparts of Quebec the city was held by an English garrison under General Murray, and in the spring of 1760 it narrowly escaped recapture by De Levis, at the head of seven thousand men, who had come from Montreal to attack it. The timely arrival of a British fleet saved the now British stronghold, while Montreal was in turn invested, and that post and all Canada surrendered to the British Crown. Three years later the Peace of Paris confirmed the cession of the country to Britain, and closed the dominion of France in Canada.
England rang with the triumphs of her ally, Frederick of Prussia, and, by a perversion peculiarly British, the scoffing freethinker became the "Protestant hero" in both church and taproom. Pitt was omnipotent in Parliament; only a single insignificant member ever ventured to oppose him. "Our unanimity is prodigious," wrote Walpole. "You would as soon hear a 'No' from an old-maid as from the House of Commons." Newcastle was supremely happy among jobbers and cringing place-hunters under the full understanding that neither he nor his kind trespassed within the sphere of foreign politics. The estimates had exceeded all former limits, and reached for those days the enormous sum of twelve and a half millions. The struggle with France was vigorously waged, too, upon the ocean, warships, privateers, and merchantmen grappling to the death with one another in many a distant sea, while the main fleets of the enemy were for the most part blockaded in their ports by vigilant British armaments. Everywhere were exhilaration and a superb feeling of confidence, engendered by incipient successes and by the consciousness that the nation was united in purpose and that the leaders of its enterprises were not chosen because they were "rich in votes or were related to a duke."
James Wolfe had certainly neither of these qualifications, and he it was whom Pitt designed to act the leading part in the coming year, "a greater part," he modestly wrote after receiving his appointment, "than I wished or desired. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most commanding abilities."
Pitt's plan for the coming season in America was to strike two great blows at Canada, and a lesser one, which, if successful, would involve the conquest of that country. Wolfe, aided by a fleet, was to attack Quebec; Amherst with another force was to push through by the Lake Champlain route and unite with him if possible. A further expedition was to be sent against Niagara under Prideaux; but for the present we are concerned only with the first and by far the most memorable of the three.
Wolfe at this time was colonel of the Sixty-seventh regiment. He was to have local rank only of major-general while in America, since more substantial elevation would, in the eyes of Newcastle and his friends, have been almost an outrage on the British Constitution as by them interpreted. Pitt and his young officers, however, were well content to waive such trifles for the present, and concede so much of consolation to the long list of rejected incapables, in return for such honor and glory as might perchance be theirs.
The land force was to consist of twelve thousand men, a few of whom were to sail from England, but the bulk were to be drawn from the American and West Indian garrisons. The latter, however, were counter-ordered; the former proved to be below the estimated strength, and the actual number that gathered in Louisburg, the point of rendezvous, was only about eight thousand five hundred. The command of the fleet was given to Admiral Saunders, and this appointment demanded great discretion, as the sailor in this instance had not only to be efficient on his own element, but to be a man of tact, and one who at the same time would put patriotism above professional jealousy, and could be trusted to work heartily with the land forces.
It was late in February when Saunders' fleet, convoying Wolfe, his stores, and a few troops, sailed from Spithead. The winds being adverse and the seas running high, May had opened before the wild coast of Nova Scotia was dimly seen through the whirling wreaths of fog. It was a late season, and Louisburg harbor was still choked with ice, so that the fleet had to make southward for Halifax at the cost of much of that time which three years' experience had at length taught the British was so precious in all North American enterprises. At Halifax Wolfe found the troops from the American garrisons awaiting him. Among them was the Forty-third regiment, with the gallant Major Knox, our invaluable diarist, filled with joy at the prospect of active service after twenty months' confinement in a backwoods fort, and ready with his sword as happily for us he was with his pen. In a fortnight Louisburg was open, and both fleet and transports were grinding amid the still drifting ice in its harbor. Here again the army was landed, and its numbers completed from the Louisburg garrison.
There was naturally much to be done with an army brought together from so many various quarters. The force, too, proved, as I have said, far short of the estimate, being considerably under nine thousand men; but, on the other hand, these were all good troops and mostly veterans. Though the benefits of Bath waters had been more than neutralized by nearly three months of buffeting on the element he so loathed, Wolfe spared himself no effort. He was not only a fighting, but to the highest degree an organizing, general. Every sickly and unlikely man, small as was his force, was weeded out. Every commissariat detail down to the last gaiter-button was carefully scrutinized. Seldom had England sent out a body of men so perfect in discipline, spirit, and material of war, and assuredly none so well commanded since the days of Marlborough. It was well it was so, seeing that they were destined to attack one of the strongest posts in the world, defended by an army nearly twice as numerous as themselves, and fighting, moreover, in defence of its home and country and, as it fully believed, of its religion. The young general was thoroughly alive to the numerical weakness of his force, but that he rejoiced in its efficiency is evident from his letters, and he was hard to please. "If valor can make amends for want of numbers," he wrote to Pitt, "we shall succeed."
Admiral Durell, with ten ships, had been sent forward early in May to stop French supply- or war-ships from ascending the St. Lawrence when navigation opened. It was June 1st when Wolfe and Saunders with the main army followed him, owing to fog and ice and contrary winds, in somewhat straggling fashion. The bands played the time-honored air of The Girl I Left Behind Me, and the men cheered lustily as the ships cleared the bar, while at the mess-tables, says Knox, there was only one toast among the officers—"British colors on every French fort, post, and garrison in America." With Saunders went twenty-two ships of the line—five frigates and seventeen sloops-of-war, besides the transports. All went smoothly till the 20th, when, the wind dropping, they were caught in the cross-currents caused by the outpouring waters of the Saguenay, which, draining a vast mountain wilderness to the northward, would be accounted a mighty river if it were not for the still mightier one that absorbs it. Here the ships ran some risk of fouling, but escaped any serious damage, and in three days were at the Île aux Coudres, where the real dangers of the navigation began. It must be remembered that such a venture was unprecedented, and regarded hitherto as an impossibility for large ships without local pilots. The very presence of the first made the second possible, for some of the vessels approaching the shore ran up French flags, whereupon numbers of the country people, in response to an invitation, came on board, little guessing the visitors could be their enemies.
Pilots were by this ruse secured, and their services impressed under pain of death. Knox, who understood French, tells us that the poor unwilling pilot who took his ship up the tortuous channel made use of the most frightful imprecations, swearing that most of the fleet and the whole army would find their graves in Canada. An old British tar, on the other hand, master of a transport and possessed of an immense scorn for foreigners, would not allow a French pilot to interfere, and insisted, in the teeth of all remonstrance, on navigating his own ship. "D—n me," he roared, "I'll convince you that an Englishman shall go where a Frenchman daren't show his nose," and he took it through in safety. "The enemy," wrote Vaudreuil soon after this to his Government, "have passed sixty ships-of-war where we dare not risk a vessel of a hundred tons by night or day." The British navy has not been sufficiently remembered in the story of Quebec.