[375] “The French had posted sentries along shore to challenge boats and vessels, and give the alarm occasionally. The first boat that contained the English troops being questioned accordingly, a captain of Fraser’s regiment, who had served in Holland, and who was perfectly well acquainted with the French language and customs, answered without hesitation to Qui vive?—which is their challenging word,—la France; nor was he at a loss to answer the second question, which was much more particular and difficult. When the sentinel demanded, a quel regiment? the captain replied, de la reine, which he knew, by accident, to be one of those that composed the body commanded by Bougainville. The soldier took it for granted this was the expected convoy (a convoy of provisions expected that night for the garrison of Quebec), and, saying passe, allowed all the boats to proceed without further question. In the same manner the other sentries were deceived; though one, more wary than the rest, came running down to the water’s edge, and called, Pour quoi est ce que vous ne parlez pas haut? ‘Why don’t you speak with an audible voice?’ To this interrogation, which implied doubt, the captain answered with admirable presence of mind, in a soft tone of voice, Tai toi nous serons entendues! ‘hush! we shall be overheard and discovered.’ Thus cautioned, the sentry retired without farther altercation.”—Smollett.
[376] General account of the battle.
[377] Smollett.
[378] “Captain Macdonald was an accomplished high-spirited officer. He was a second son of Clanranald. He entered early in life into the French service, and following Prince Charles Edward to Scotland, in 1745, he was taken prisoner, and along with O’Neil, afterwards a lieutenant-general in the service of Spain, and commander of the expedition against Algiers in 1775, was confined in the castle of Edinburgh; but being liberated without trial, he returned to France, where he remained till 1756, when he came back to Scotland, and was appointed to a company in Fraser’s Highlanders. On the expeditions against Louisburg and Quebec he was much in the confidence of Generals Amherst, Wolfe, and Murray, by whom he was employed on all duties where more than usual difficulty and danger was to be encountered, and where more than common talent, address, and spirited example were required. Of this several instances occurred at Louisburg and Quebec.”—Stewart’s Sketches.
[379] “This officer engaged in the Rebellion of 1745, and was in Stewart of Appin’s regiment, which had seventeen officers and gentlemen of the name of Stewart killed, and ten wounded, at Culloden. He was severely wounded on that occasion, as he was on this. As he lay in his quarters some days afterwards, speaking to some brother officers on the recent battles, he exclaimed, ‘From April battles and Murray generals, good Lord, deliver me!’ alluding to his wound at Culloden, where the vanquished blamed Lord George Murray, the commander-in-chief of the rebel army, for fighting on the best field in the country for regular troops, artillery, and cavalry; and likewise alluding to his present wound, and to General Murray’s conduct in marching out of a garrison to attack an enemy, more than treble his numbers, in an open field, where their whole strength could be brought to act. One of those story retailers who are sometimes about headquarters, lost no time in communicating this disrespectful prayer of the rebellious clansman; General Murray, who was a man of humour and of a generous mind, called on the wounded officer the following morning, and heartily wished him better deliverance in the next battle, when he hoped to give him occasion to pray in a different manner.”—Stewart’s Sketches.
[380] In a journal kept by this officer, lent to the editor by the Hon. John Fraser de Berry, “Chief of the Frasers of the Province of Quebec,” Member of the Legislative Council of Canada, &c., it is stated that the 78th had about 400 men in the field on this occasion, half of whom had of their own accord left the hospital to take part in the fight.
[381] “While General Fraser was speaking in Gaelic to the men, an old Highlander, who had accompanied his son to Glasgow, was leaning on his staff gazing at the general with great earnestness. When he had finished, the old man walked up to him, and with that easy familiar intercourse which in those days subsisted between the Highlanders and their superiors, shook him by the hand, exclaiming, ‘Simon, you are a good soldier, and speak like a man; as long as you live, Simon of Lovat will never die;’ alluding to the general’s address and manner, which, as was said, resembled much that of his father, Lord Lovat, whom the old Highlanders knew perfectly. The late General Sir George Beckwith witnessed the above scene, and often spoke of it with much interest.”—Stewart’s Sketches.
[382] This officer was called Duncan of the Kiln, from the circumstance of his being born in an old malt-kiln, which was fitted up as a temporary residence for his mother, after the destruction of his father’s castle of Cluny, in 1745.
[383] He was son of Campbell of Glendaruel, in Argyleshire.
[384] One of the first who died was the Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, son of the Earl of Lauderdale. He was an able and an enterprising officer, and attracted the particular notice of General Washington, with whom he was personally acquainted. During some of the operations, which brought them into occasional collision, Colonel Maitland jocularly notified to the American general, that, to enable him to distinguish the Highlanders, so that he might do justice to their exploits, in annoying his posts, and obstructing his convoys and detachments, they would in future wear a red feather in their bonnets. Fraser’s Highlanders accordingly put the red feather in their bonnets, which they wore till the conclusion of the war. This must not be confounded with the red feather of the 42d, the origin of which has been given in the history of that regiment.