by Dan Snow
The army’s back was to the river. In front of it in the distance was the road from Quebec to Ste Foy and Cap Rouge, to its left was thick woodland and Quebec itself lay off to the right although the men could not see it thanks to some higher ground known as the Buttes ù Neveu. The visibility was good; the ships anchored off the Anse au Foulon and in the basin of Quebec recorded in their logs that the weather was ‘fresh’ but ‘fair’ and ‘clear’.2 Knox, however, remembers it being ‘showery’ as the morning progressed.3
There was still the popping of musketry, which rhythmically flared up and died away as pockets of resistance were found and dealt with by the light troops. The charismatic chaplain of the Highlanders, Robert MacPherson (Caipal Mhor in Gaelic) reported that ‘there was perpetual hot skirmishing between our troops and the enemy who had full possession of every bush’.4 Mackellar, the Chief Engineer, wrote in his journal that ‘we found some of the enemy in a house and some Indians skulking in a coppice hard by’. Grenadiers were immediately detached to ‘beat them off, which, after exchanging a few shots, they effected’.5 Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ says that from daybreak onwards, the ‘enemy’s light troops began to swarm in the bushes, and behind the hillocks, and perpetually thickened and kept a very hot fire on the troops’.6 These attacks may have led to a trickle of casualties but they were no more than a nuisance for the British and there was still no sign of larger scale, more organized French counter-attacks.
Wolfe made his way to the right on a reconnoitre towards Quebec. There, beyond the higher ground, he caught his first glimpse of his enemy. His ‘Family Journal’ says that he watched as Montcalm’s army ‘formed under the cannon of the town’.7 Wolfe hurried back to his men and marched them closer to the French. Both sides were now locked in the inexorable series of well-defined small steps that led to battle in the eighteenth century. During this so-called ‘advance to contact’ mistakes could prove lethal. If either side lost its shape and order, the enemy would see a clear advantage and launch its attack. Moving thousands of men across open countryside while keeping them under tight control was why drill was so central. A manual released during the Seven Years War told keen young officers that one of the maxims of the great Marshal Saxe, the brilliant French commander from the War of Austrian Succession, was that ‘the principal and most material part of all exercise is the teaching soldiers to use their legs properly and not their arms’.8 Saxe and Frederick the Great both spent much time encouraging the spread of the cadenced steps whereby men moved their limbs in time with each other rather than ambling along at their own pace. During the 1750s this cadenced marching was imposed throughout the British and Continental armies. Cumberland introduced fifes to help the men keep in time. By marching in time large numbers of men could be deployed over greater distances, making sure that when they arrived they were in tight formation and able to fire devastating musket volleys.
Wolfe’s aides-de-camp would have carried the message along the line to prepare to form column and move off. The men in the regiments would have performed a smart right turn and, at the shouted command of ‘March’, pushed their left feet forward. They marched in time to the fifes and the drums. The men used the ‘Prussian step’ in which they carried ‘foot directly forward with a straight knee, near and almost parallel to the ground’. They were told to leave a moment of pause with the forward knee in full extension before they sprang forward ‘from the ball of the foot which you stood on’ and let the other one fall to the ground. As they marched they constantly monitored the man to the right with whom they had to stay in line, while ‘their steps should be exactly the same length’. There were three possible steps: the short, the long, and the double. The short was one foot and a half, the long was two feet, and the double was also two feet but performed in half the time.9
They were told not to look down at their feet or those of the men in front of them; they had to have confidence that if they all stepped off on the left and kept the same length of stride that they would not step on anyone. They had to ‘assume themselves a soldier-like air’. That meant ‘their breasts forward, and their shoulders back’. The importance of ‘throwing back the shoulders and holding the head up high’ was pounded into them, ‘especially those who are used to follow the plough’. Above all they were ‘to carry their arms well, pressing their piece against their body’.10
At the head of each company marched the captain; four feet behind him marched the drummers and another four feet behind them was the front rank of men; each successive rank was four feet back. On either flank subalterns kept station while sergeants marched along prodding, thumping, and encouraging men to stay in time. When Wolfe was ready, the lead regiment wheeled to the left and one by one the others followed. The men on the outside of the wheel lengthened their paces slightly to cover the greater distance on the outside of the bend while not losing their dressing. This brought the long column onto a north-south trajectory perpendicular to the river. At the command ‘Halt’, the army came to a stop, their heels level, about four inches apart. At the next command the men rotated through ninety degrees and the entire British line was now facing Quebec. Malcolm Fraser remembered that to the north, on his left, were ‘a few houses and at some distance the low ground and wood above the General Hospital with the River St Charles’. In front he could see ‘the town of Quebec, about a mile distant’.11
They were now in their line of battle. Great care was taken in presenting an impressive appearance to an attacking army. Every man had a preassigned place. ‘The tallest men should be in the front rank,’ stated a training manual, ‘yet, if a man has a fine person, and is well made, he ought to be put into the front.’12 This was not just a trick to intimidate the enemy or look neat on a parade ground. It fixed every man’s position within the line which made it easier to rally and re-form the regiment in case it panicked or got scattered during a battle.
Wolfe stayed on a rise on the southern side of the battlefield near the cliffs that dropped off to the St Lawrence. Here on the very right of the British line were the three companies of Louisbourg Grenadiers, to their left was Bragg’s 28th, then Kennedy’s 43rd, Lascelles’ 47th, Fraser’s 78th Highlanders, and at the very left of the line Anstruther’s 58th. Webb’s 48th was in reserve, spread out in four separate ‘subdivisions’ which could reinforce the front line if required. To the north there were woods which were becoming increasingly occupied with Native Americans and Canadians who kept up a steady fire, sniping at the redcoats as they went through their evolutions. To protect this flank Townshend wheeled the three regiments which had been in the second line, Lawrence’s 3rd/60th, Monckton’s 2nd/60th, and Amherst’s 15th, and formed them at right angles or en potence to the rest of the army facing north. A similar move on the extreme right of the army, between it and the St Lawrence, saw Otway’s 35th Regiment placed at right angles facing south to counter any of the enemy’s light troops that sought to sneak along the bushes and trees at the top of the cliff and get round behind Wolfe’s army and between it and its landing place. Wolfe left Howe and his light infantry to secure houses and strongpoints to the rear of the whole army. One of the light infantrymen reported that ‘we stood at about 800 paces from the line [and] were ordered to face outwards and cover the rear of our line as there was a body of enemy’ in that direction.13 This ‘body of men’ was Bougainville’s powerful force, of which there was still no sign. Wolfe was obviously nervous as to their whereabouts, though; he sent Lawrence’s 3rd/60th to join the light infantry in guarding the area around Foulon and the army’s lines of communication. Wolfe’s army was forced to protect itself from enemy forces on three sides and a steep cliff and river on its fourth.14
Each regiment was formed up only two ranks deep. Gone were formations ten men deep, bristling with pikes, which engaged in a giant shoving match. The advent of the musket meant that every man needed a clear view of the enemy so that he could bring his weapon to bear. Firepower now decided battles. The British army at the time still fav
oured a three-rank formation but assertive young commanders like Wolfe and Amherst believed that two ranks would deliver a sufficient weight of musketry and cover more ground. They were the pioneers of the famous ‘thin red line’ which a generation later Wellington, among others, would prove to be so impenetrably strong. Amherst had insisted that it was standard practice in North America. Wolfe echoed his commander in chief, ordering that ‘the method is always to be practised…as the enemy has very few regular troops to oppose us that no yelling Indians or fire of Canadians can possibly withstand two ranks’.15 Adoption of the two ranks was the product of necessity as much as innovation. Wolfe’s army was depleted. Sergeant Johnson later wrote that ‘our line of battle would admit of us to be drawn up two deep only, from the smallness of our number, as well as the quantity of ground we had to cover to secure our flanks’. The men had three feet between them, and each regiment was around forty yards apart.16 In all the line was about half a mile long.17
Behind Wolfe stood the Louisbourg Grenadiers. With only 216 men, four drummers, nine non-commissioned officers, and twelve officers, it was one of the smallest of his regiments that morning but even the largest were sadly understrength. Young Malcolm Fraser reported that the long summer had left the regiments ‘very weak’.18 Webb’s 48th, in reserve, was the largest unit, with around six hundred and fifty men commanded by about thirty officers and thirty NCOs. Fraser’s 78th mustered about six hundred Highlanders. In all Wolfe had 3,826 men, controlled by 230 officers and 239 NCOs and marshalled by 83 drummers. This figure does not include Howe’s approximately six hundred light infantrymen who were guarding his rear. Meanwhile forty-six officers and men of the artillery handled the cannon when they arrived from the landing beach.19
Wolfe had been forced to detach the 3rd/60th to guard his rear and use the 15th, 2nd/60th, and the 35th to protect his flanks while the 48th was in reserve. That meant that the number of musket-wielding private soldiers who stood in his line of battle facing towards Quebec and the French was 1,800. As Wolfe watched the French mass in front of him he could see that these men were outnumbered.
The Plains of Abraham rang with noise: the thump of a thousand footfalls, the clatter of the drums, the opening salvoes by the artillery pieces still finding their range, the pop of muskets fired among the skirmishers around the fringes of the battlefield, and the roar of officers and NCOs as they attempted to keep their men in good order. There was also one distinctive sound which was quite new on a North American battlefield. Behind the 78th Highlanders the bagpipes were playing. No Highlander ever went to war without his piper. This included, of course, the 1745-6 rebellion. After it the pipes were defined as ‘an instrument of war’ and outlawed. Now, thirteen years later, they were only permitted when on British state business. They were attached to recruiting parties to inspire young men to join the colours and kept their spirits up on the battlefield. Pipers were born not made. It was a hereditary office. Sons of pipers would go and train for seven years at places like the MacCrimmon school on Skye. The piper for the grenadier company of the 78th was Alexander McIntyre, the latest in a long line of men who had piped for the Clan Menzies.20 He and the other pipers of the regiment wore fine, silver-laced jackets and black bearskin hats. From the pipes themselves hung small banners with the regimental number and the royal cipher.
The British watched the French spread out across the Plains, and as more and more units arrived one redcoat compared them to swarming ‘bees out of a hive’.21 It took about two hours, until just before 1000 hours, to organize the French battle line. There is some disagreement as to the numbers of French troops present on the battlefield. Canadian sharpshooters and the Native Americans hovered on both flanks sniping at the British troops while the French army regiments, the colonial regulars, and some militia units all formed a battle line under the walls of Quebec. One French officer wrote that ‘our army at Beauport had for some days been reduced, by the corps detached from it, to about 6000 men. To guard the camp were left the two battalions of Montreal, comprising about 1500 men, which nevertheless advanced as far as the river St Charles.’ ‘M de Montcalm,’ he continued, ‘could therefore, according to this calculation, muster only four thousand five hundred men.’22 Montcalm had heard nothing from Bougainville and his force of around three thousand men.
To many of the British observers the French army appeared much bigger than their own. Malcolm Fraser wrote that ‘I am certain they were greatly superior to us in numbers.’23 Knox claims that it numbered seven and a half thousand men. Admiral Holmes heard from eyewitnesses that it was ‘about 9000’ strong.24 Townshend gives the more realistic figure of 3,440. About two thousand, or just under half, of Montcalm’s men were regular soldiers of the troupes de terres although their numbers had been bolstered by the inclusion of militiamen, whose ability to stand and deliver musket volley after musket volley while under fire themselves was unproven. Another 600 men were the colonial regulars of the troupes de la marine and the rest were militiamen and Native Americans. The French had more men overall and an advantage of numbers in terms of the two front lines that by mid-morning stretched across the Plains.
On the right of the French line proper was, according to Townshend, ‘half the troops of the colony, the battalions of La Sarre, Languedoc and the remainder of their Canadians and Indians’. Next to them, in the centre of the line, was ‘a column…formed by the battalions of Béarn and Guyenne’. Their left wing, closest to the St Lawrence, was the other half of the colonial troops and the Royal Roussillon battalion.25 The French were unable to exploit their vast reservoir of artillery in and around the town. Accounts differ but it is certain that at most Montcalm could only call upon three light cannon and possibly as little as one alone. On either flank hordes of sharpshooters and skirmishers hovered, making use of trees, bushes, and buildings to shelter behind as they picked off British targets.
The British waited silently for battle; each regiment in two straight lines. The officers stood in their customary positions. The commander was ahead of his men, in the dead centre. Company commanders likewise stood in front of their units, checking that all was as it should be. Subalterns and sergeants prowled behind the rear rank ready to remind men of their duty or drag them into gaps created by cannon and musket balls. Behind the centre of each regiment was the second in command and the adjutant. In Europe the former, at least, would have been on horseback to give him a view of the rest of the battle but here in North America the entire British army went into battle on foot.
At the centre of each regiment flapped the two unfurled colours. Each was carried by an ensign, the most junior of the officers, nearly always in their teens. The colours were six feet six inches wide and six feet high and mounted on a spear-tipped pole almost ten feet in length. To help the ensigns’ boyish frames support the weight of them the foot of the pole rested in a leather pouch attached to a shoulder belt. One colour was the ‘King’s Colour’, a Union Flag with a distinctive regimental badge at the centre surrounded by roses (or thistles, in the case of the 78th Highland Regiment). The other was particular to each unit, the ‘Regimental Colour’. This had a Union Flag in the corner and then a design in the middle involving the regimental number and often some laurel leaves. These colours were the embodiment of the regiment’s pride, fighting spirit, and honour. To lose them in battle was unthinkable; to capture them from an enemy guaranteed immortality. This value meant that the colours would witness the fiercest fighting. Behind the ensigns stood two sergeants, supposed to be armed with short pikes but probably carrying muskets and bayonets. Their grizzled presence reassured the young men charged with guarding the colours. When Wolfe had been a battalion commander he had ordered that one soldier from each of the ten companies in the regiment, who had a record unblemished by any disciplinary infractions, plus two corporals were to stand behind the sergeants and defend the colours, with their lives if required.
The grenadier company was split in two, each half taking up position on either ex
treme of their regiment. Their mitre caps made them look taller than the tricornes worn by the men of the other companies. By this stage of the campaign, though, the uniforms would have been a long way off Hyde Park parade standard. A long summer of skirmishing, amphibious landings, building, and digging had long since ruined their smart appearance. The men’s hair was cropped short, their faces deeply suntanned. Their clothing and kit was just as worn. Their once bright coats were faded, patched, and stitched. Knapsacks and haversacks had been adjusted and modified. Tomahawks dangled from belts in place of swords. The only guarantee was that their muskets and bayonets were spotless and burnished bright as new.
Behind the two ranks were the musicians, whose regular drumming and fifing had brought the men to their current station in good order. Now they had laid aside most of their instruments and were preparing for their secondary, but equally important, role. They tied blankets between poles creating stretchers to carry the wounded back to receive the uncertain benefits of attention from the surgeon and his assistants who were setting out their equipment. The drummers always wore gaudy uniforms. The coats were made of the ‘facing colour’ of the regiment to which they belonged, that is the colour of the linings, lapels, and cuffs worn by the men of the unit. Thus the drummers and musicians of Knox’s regiment, Kennedy’s 43rd, wore white coats with red cuffs and lapels. The whole uniform was then decorated with plenty of white lace flecked with red and black.
The battalion commanders, the brigadiers, and Wolfe himself all took a close interest in the positioning of the men. Monckton, as the senior brigadier, took his place in battle on the right of the army. Near him Lieutenant Colonel Murray, one of Wolfe’s only remaining friends in the army, commanded the Louisbourg Grenadiers, which were anchoring the army’s right wing. They were particularly ragtag even among Wolfe’s other motley regiments. Each company sported different facings because they were the grenadier company from three different regiments. One company had buff facings with white lace, another had buff facings with gold lace, and the third sported green facings with silver lace.
