by Dan Snow
Townshend accepted Ramezay’s terms without hesitation. He was deeply nervous of the large French force operating upriver of him. His concern is apparent in one General Order in which he warned that ‘the enemy is expected’. Officers were to ‘keep lights in their tents and not lie down, but visit the men’s tents and see that they are ready to turn out at a minute’s warning, in case of alarm’. Two men in each tent were appointed to strike it as soon as the French were sighted.47 The engineer, Montresor, wrote to his father saying that they had not had a chance to dig batteries to place the siege guns in because ‘some advice [was] received that the enemy were making some motions seeming to attack us’. Defending the camp was more important than siege preparations and so cannon were parcelled out to the regiments and working parties ‘cut down a quantity of brush in front of our encampment’.48 Knox and his men remained ‘very alert’.49 Town-shend’s own journal shows a sense of relief that the French were giving in. It reports that ‘before we had any batteries erected, or could have for two or three days’, a messenger came out from the town on 17 September under a flag of truce ‘with proposals of capitulation’.50
On the afternoon of 18 September the keys to the three gates into Quebec were handed over to Townshend. Before sunset Wolfe’s close friend, Lieutenant Colonel Murray, led three companies of Louisbourg Grenadiers into the town to take possession of the gates. Small groups of men were sent to guard churches and the leading inhabitants. Next, fifty artillerymen ceremonially hauling a light cannon and a burning match, followed by Townshend and his aides, marched in to take possession of the town. Beside the shattered husk of the Governor General’s palace the formal handover occurred. Immediately all bastions and storerooms were secured by British officers with small parties of troops. Careful lists were made of captured enemy supplies. The efficiency of the transition was intended to stand as a comparison to the slaughter and savagery of the French capture of Fort William Henry. Meanwhile Colonel Williamson of the artillery had the honour of hoisting the Union Flag of Great Britain on a prominent place on the south end of the city walls. Every company of Townshend’s army had been given specific and immutable orders not to carry out ‘acts of violence, pillage or cruelty’. Quebec, they were reminded, now belonged to ‘his Britannic Majesty, and not to the French king’. Anyone who disobeyed this order could expect death and no mercy.51 At 1800 hours, as these solemn proceedings went on in the Upper Town, Knox relates that Captain Palliser, commander of the seventy-four-gun ship of the line, Shrewsbury, led a ‘large body of seamen and inferior officers’ ashore to take possession of the Lower Town. They too raised a Union Flag on the road leading to the Upper Town. It could be seen from the basin and the banks of the St Lawrence below Quebec.52 The capital of New France, the key to King Louis’ North American empire, was now a British possession.
Townshend was generous to the garrison. The first article of the capitulation allowed the soldiers, sailors, and marines to ‘march out with their arms and baggage, drums beating, lighted matches, with two pieces of cannon, and twelve rounds’. They would then be ‘embarked as conveniently as possible, in order to be landed at the first port in France’.53 The French were granted the so-called ‘honours of war’. In return for a tenacious defence they were being allowed to leave with their colours flying, two symbolic cannon, and ammunition in their pouches. It meant they could return to France having demonstrated that they had done everything honour required of them to defend Quebec. Article Two dealt with the other great concern of eighteenth-century decision makers, the protection of property. Townshend agreed that ‘the inhabitants shall be maintained in the possession of their houses, goods, effects and privileges’. Having thus preserved their personal honour, that of France, and the possessions of the propertied classes of Quebec, the following day French officers led their men down to four waiting transports and set sail for France.
There was obviously some grumbling in the British camp at this magnanimous treatment of the French who, many thought, did not deserve it. Townshend wrote to his wife telling her that ‘the command of the army is as disagreeable as any other. Men are as mean here as in any other profession.’54 The author of Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ obviously led the whispering. ‘We might have fixed our own terms as we knew by deserters the state of the place,’ he criticized. Instead of which, he claimed, Townshend was far too lenient and missed an opportunity to rescue ‘English prisoners taken in this campaign’ from the ‘hands of the enemy’.55 Townshend knew the terms would not please everyone. In his dispatch to London he sought to pre-empt some of the criticism. A quick capitulation made military sense, he wrote, ‘considering the enemy assembling in our rear, the inclemency of the season which would scarcely admit of our bringing a gun up the precipice, the critical situation of our fleet from the Equinoctial gales’. In addition he was keen to avoid battering down the walls; he wanted Quebec in ‘a defensible state, against any attack which might otherwise be attempted against it in the winter’.56 Holmes agreed; ‘the defences of the town still entirely perfect,’ he wrote in a letter, ‘and the late season of the year, will account sufficiently for these terms’.57 Above all Townshend was aware that King George’s new French subjects could not be coerced into loyalty. He wrote to his mother saying that ‘I have done all I could to reduce the Canadians by humanity. The only way I know of conciliating any people.’58
The invalid Monckton was unhappy with the capitulation. Townshend wrote to him on 19 September apologizing profusely for not having included him in the surrender discussions. ‘I had no idea that you were well enough to attend to the business,’ he told Monckton and assured him that it was ‘far from my wish to gain credit with the newspapers’.59 Monckton was generous in his next letter. ‘You are one of the last men in the world that could give me offence,’ he told Townshend. ‘I do most sincerely assure you that I never said anything either pro or con, except that I did suppose I should see the capitulation before it was signed.’ ‘I hope my dear Townshend,’ he warned, ‘that malicious tongues will not be suffered—to hurt me in your opinion.’60
Ramezay’s decision was closely scrutinized back in France and he came under vicious attack for surrendering the town. Vaudreuil, who had given him instructions to surrender as soon as supplies ran out, rounded on him and told Versailles that he had ‘expected a more protracted resistance, having adopted the surest measures to convey provisions into the town’. He then hoped that the Minister would ‘please express to the King the poignant regret I have felt at this occurrence in a moment so unexpected’.61 De Lévis was desperate when he heard from his cavalry commander that Ramezay was about to surrender. According to Bougainville, the new French commander ‘advanced the army to get within range of attacking the English’. Bougainville himself was leading an advanced guard and was only ‘three quarters of a league from Quebec when I learned that the city had surrendered’ after it had been ‘bombarded for sixty-eight days’.62 He blamed Ramezay. ‘I even hoped to throw myself into Quebec to defend it,’ Bougainville wrote, but Ramezay ‘never wished to give me the opportunity, in spite of my several proposals…This man surrendered without having tried a cannon shot, and the enemy not even having started their trenches.’63 The French had no choice but to fall back to Jacques Cartier. ‘Such was the end of what up to this moment was the finest campaign in the world,’ wrote Bougainville. He was in no doubt of the cause of their defeat. Always unswervingly loyal to Montcalm, he believed that ‘his death caused our misfortunes’.64 In fact, Montcalm’s death had merely been a product of rather than a catalyst for the French disaster.
Major combat operations for 1759 came to an end as de Lévis’ French army retreated for the last time. The British slowly fed their troops into the town. Murray wrote in his journal for 19 September that ‘this day I marched into town, or more properly the ruins of it’.65 Mackellar wrote that ‘we found the buildings in general in a most ruinous condition, infinitely worse than we would have imagined, for besides those b
urnt there was hardly a house in the town that was not hurt by either shot or shell and scarcely habitable without some repairing’.66 Williamson agreed that Quebec was ‘more battered than I imagined’. He calculated that ‘535 [buildings] are burned down, besides we have shattered most of the rest’.67 Knox wrote that ‘the havoc is not to be conceived…The low town is so great a ruin that its streets are almost impassable.’68 As the troops flooded into the city, despite Townshend’s strict instructions, there was, according to a French source, ‘considerable pillage’.69 Men sifted through the ruins of the once magnificent town, looking for wine, food, and a roof over their heads. Knox reports that ‘some soldiers…committed disorders upon the natives by robbing and plundering them’.70 The nights were growing longer and colder. Malcolm Fraser looked about him as he entered Quebec and realized that ‘we have but a very dismal prospect for seven or eight months’ as ‘most of the houses are destroyed’ and ‘fresh provisions are very scarce and every other thing exorbitantly dear’.71 Other soldiers were busy doing sightseeing of another kind. Jeremiah Pearson wrote that ‘it is cloudy and wet weather today and I went about the city and see some very likely French gals there’.72
Mackellar did a thorough investigation of the defences of the town and stockpiles of food and military supplies. In his opinion the defences were ‘little more than half finished, and could have held out but for a very few days after the opening of our batteries’. There was a considerable number of cannon in the town and along the Beauport shore; he counted 234 in all with plenty of powder and round shot. Poignantly thirty-seven of the guns had once belonged to General Braddock. They had been brought up from the Pennsylvania backcountry where they had been captured at Monongahela but were now finally restored to British masters. The pathetic stash of provisions which Mackellar believed would have fed the town for no more than four days was immediately ‘distributed to the women and children of the poorer inhabitants’. The engineer reports, remarkably, that ‘there were so many difficulties to struggle with that it was thought doubtful by some what measures might be most advisable, whether to keep the place or to demolish and abandon it’. Unsurprisingly the commanders quickly realized that abandoning the town that had been captured with so much effort in time, sweat, and blood was politically unimaginable and ‘it was therefore determined to keep Quebec at all hazards and measures were immediately taken accordingly’.73
Townshend had had his fill of exotic foreign campaigning. As he told his wife in a letter, ‘do not think my Dear Life that any command tempts me to stay. The troops will soon go into garrison and then I can set out with the admiral.’74 He told his mother that ‘I know not what sleep or a moment’s retirement is, yet I am in perfect health.’ His only real concern was that those he was leaving in charge ‘will give the French but a poor idea of our humanity’ and reverse much of his benign work.75 On the advice of the doctors Monckton was to head to New York to recover from his wound. Murray would become Governor with Burton as his second in command. Townshend left Murray his shaving trunk and offered him the use of his chairs. He made it clear that he expected to refight the campaign in Parliament and in the drawing rooms of London. To arm himself he took a copy of all the letters sent during the campaign, which had ‘now become so interesting to us’. This line was followed by the phrase, ‘by the factious malignity of others’ which he thought better of and crossed out. ‘I think I should have a copy of the paper to General Wolfe concerning his intended landing at first higher up the river,’ he continued. ‘Possession of such proofs,’ he assured Murray would allow them to ‘escape the censure of rational and upright men, though perhaps no authorities can secure a man from that defamation which is the offspring of ignorance and faction’.76 Murray wrote back in an intimate tone. He refers to a joke they shared and says he is sending a present for Townshend’s wife. But he continues seriously, writing that ‘since so black a lie was propagated I think myself very happy that you will be on the spot to contradict whatever ignorance or faction may suggest’. He was keen to show the world that Wolfe’s orders ‘throughout the campaign showed little stability, stratagem or fixed resolution’. He told Townshend that ‘I wish his friends had not been so much our enemies’, and admitted that thanks to this hostility the two of them were ‘acting on the defensive’. Murray and Townshend obviously planned their strategy carefully. ‘You have execution of the plan,’ Murray told the London-bound Townshend, ‘and I am well persuaded you will manage it with as much tenderness to the memory of the poor general as the nature of things will admit.’77
Murray would command the men who would stay in Quebec as a garrison over the winter and then attempt to finish the job of entirely conquering Canada in 1760. The vast majority of Wolfe’s army stayed with him. Of the infantry, only the Louisbourg Grenadiers and many of the rangers would leave; the former returning to their regiments in the Louisbourg garrison. Williamson and many of the larger siege guns would winter in Boston. As for the naval contingent: Saunders could not risk his precious vessels in the St Lawrence over the winter. The ice would crush the hull of even his largest ships like an eggshell. He did leave the Porcupine and Racehorse, having pulled them up out of the water with four other small vessels. This, it was hoped, would give the British naval superiority on the river as soon as it melted the following spring. Lord Colville, Captain of the seventy-gun Northumberland, was made a commodore and left at Halifax in command of a strong squadron with orders to press into the St Lawrence as early as was physically possible after the ice started to melt. There was to be no repeat of Durell’s failure to stop French reinforcements reaching Canada as they had done before the 1759 campaign.
Saunders departed on 18 October. The last naval detachments left on 26 October, as late as they dared. Townshend had been far more generous to his naval colleagues than Wolfe. In a dispatch to London he reported that ‘I should be wanting in paying my due respects to the admirals and the naval service if I neglected this occasion to acknowledge how much we are indebted for our success to the constant assistance and support we have received.’ He then told a diplomatic lie, referring to the ‘perfect harmony and immediate correspondence which has prevailed throughout our operations in the uncommon difficulties which the nature of this country in particular presents to military operations of a great extent and which no army can in itself solely supply’. With great generosity he concluded that ‘it is my duty short as my command has been to acknowledge for that time how great a share the navy has had in this successful campaign’.78 Saunders was no less generous; he credited Holmes with the ‘very critical operation’ and said that ‘this tedious campaign’ had been brought to a successful conclusion thanks to the fact that ‘there has continued a perfect good understanding between the army and navy’.79
The voyage home was as difficult as the journey out. The ships were pounded by gales. Day after day they sped east under reefed topsails alone. By early December many of them, with ‘provisions very short’, limped into ports and bays on the west coast of Ireland, the Solent being simply too far.80 Saunders and Townshend almost took part in a second decisive battle. In the first week of November a ferocious westerly gale had forced the British Channel fleet under Hawke to break off its relentless blockade of the French naval base at Brest. They scurried into the sheltered waters off Torbay, leaving the French fleet able to take advantage of an unusual easterly breeze to break out of Brest. The French admiral, Conflans, made for the invasion flotilla in the Morbihan on the south side of the Brittany peninsula. Admiral Hawke was chafing that he had not shared in the naval triumphs of the year which included Quebec and a smart victory off Lagos in Portugal at which his bitter rival Boscawen had captured or destroyed five French ships of the Mediterranean squadron that was on its way to rendezvous with the Channel fleet and invade Britain. As soon as the weather permitted Hawke set off down the Channel in hot pursuit. Saunders arrived in the Channel and heard from a British ship that Hawke was chasing Conflans. He gave Townshend the choic
e between heading back to Britain or altering course to help the Channel fleet. ‘I preferred the latter having first wrote to Mr Pitt,’ wrote Townshend.81 They never caught up with the impatient Hawke. In one of the most dramatic naval encounters in British history Hawke led his fleet straight at the enemy who were attempting to escape into the dangerous waters of Quiberon Bay. Ignoring the fading light, an unknown and hazardous coastline, and a rising wind and sea Hawke fell upon the French rear. In the van of the British fleet was Magnanime commanded by Captain Richard Howe, older brother of William Howe who had commanded Wolfe’s light infantry. In rough seas the British fell upon the confused French formation. Hawke’s flagship, the Royal George, blasted two broadsides into the Superbe, which sank. Five other French ships were destroyed, including Conflans’ flagship. One French ship was captured and the other fourteen were scattered along the coast; many had thrown their guns overboard in the panic to escape and their officers and men were utterly demoralized. The only British loss was two ships wrecked.
Rarely has the strategic balance been so radically altered. Louis XV’s bold plan to save France’s honour with an all or nothing attempt to invade Britain had collapsed. Quiberon was the final victory in an unprecedented year of British successes. Her forces in Germany had defeated a French army at Minden, Quebec had fallen and victories at Lagos, and now Quiberon Bay had effectively destroyed the French navy and ended any threat of invasion. It also meant that even had Louis wanted to send significant help to his rump empire in North America he was now unable to do so. For the rest of the Seven Years War the Atlantic was a British lake.
