Empires at War

by Jr. , William M. Fowler

According to Murray, the winter of 1758—59 was "uncommonly severe" in Nova Scotia.20 Durrell did what he could at Halifax to prepare his vessels to sortie early in the season to blockade the St. Lawrence, but unusually persistent ice made navigation dangerous. The admiral opted to stay snug in port.21 During the long winter Durrell and his officers spent much of their time debating the naval aspects of the upcoming Quebec campaign. From the perspective of sea officers, they worried chiefly about getting up the St. Lawrence. No officer in the fleet had ever sailed the river, and the only available English chart, which was based on French surveys, was a poor one drawn and published in 1757. They had found several French charts at Louis­bourg, but these plotted virtually no information on the river, particularly the 125-mile stretch of water between the Saguenay River and Quebec.

  Discussions often took place in the captain's cabin aboard Pembroke. Among those at the table was the ship's master, James Cook. Born near Whitby in 1728, Cook spent many years sailing aboard colliers in the Newcastle coal trade. When war broke out in 1755, Cook, moving a few steps ahead of the press gang, decided to volunteer for naval service. He signed on as a seaman, but his skills as a pilot and ship handler advanced him and in May 1759 he was warranted a master and posted to Pembroke. As a skilled pilot, Cook was expert at handling ships in treacherous waters.22

  Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence

  On April 21 Saunders drew within sight of Cape Bretons rocky headlands. Despite the season, the ice had yet to leave Louisbourg Harbor. Unable to enter the harbor or anchor in Gabarus Bay, Saunders took his fleet down the coast to Halifax. Upon entering the harbor, Wolfe was astonished to see Durrell riding at anchor. "Military affairs that depend upon naval ones are uncertain" was his terse comment.23 The memory of Rochefort must have echoed in his head. Durrell got the message, and three days after Wolfe s arrival he sailed for the St. Lawrence with ten ships—too late, however, to prevent French reinforcements from getting through. While Durrell's ships had been swinging on their winter moorings in Halifax Harbor, twenty-three French store ships and three frigates cleared Bordeaux and battled their way past dangerous ice floes up the St. Lawrence and arrived at Quebec in early May.24

  Saunders and Wolfe wasted no time. Less than a week after Durrell's departure Halifax Harbor emptied as warships and transports got under way for the rendezvous at Louisbourg. The weather was raw and cold, and as the ships approached the rugged coast lookouts warned of bobbing ice floes amid the "gloomy air" and pounding surf. At least one transport failed to heed the warning and ran on the rocks.25 For more than two weeks Wolfe and Saunders waited at Louisbourg while the remainder of the transports and warships from Halifax, Annapolis, Boston, and New York straggled into the anchorage. The admiral and general spent hours conferring. Staffs met and sorted out matters of logistics and transportation. To help in navigation, Saunders "acquired" some Canadian pilots, who, being threatened with hanging, agreed to guide the fleet up the St. Lawrence. Even without the pilots, however, Saunders was confident that his own sailing masters and captains could do the job.

  While Saunders and his officers plotted the course to Quebec, Wolfe drilled his soldiers. Instead of the twelve thousand promised by Pitt, the general counted fewer than nine thousand. Contingents promised from America did not materialize, and those that did report, particularly the rangers, were men in whom Wolfe placed little faith.26 Each day Wolfe's men practiced the demanding task of climbing down the sides of rolling transports into flat-bottomed boats tossing about on the waves. Shore landings were repeated again and again until both the sailors and soldiers mastered the drill. Signal officers and semaphore men memorized and rehearsed dozens of flag combinations used to send orders. On board ship division officers and gun captains put their batteries through endless rounds of practice, while down below, other crewmen checked to make sure that supplies were properly stowed and easily accessible.27

  Nearly six weeks after Pitt's departure deadline Wolfe and Saunders were ready to sail. On the first of June Wolfe ordered, "The troops to land no more for exercise; the flat-bottomed boats to be hoisted up, that the ships may be ready to sail on the first signal."28 On the morning of the fourth, three guns were fired from the fortress as a signal to get under way, and the first contingent of the fleet headed for sea. "Weather wet and foggy" read the logs. After giving a wide berth to the tip of Cape Breton, the fleet rounded the Gaspe and by the sixteenth was well within the St. Lawrence at the island of Bic, where it anchored for the night to await news from Durrell. In the morning the frigate Bichmond hove into sight from upriver delivering news that Durrell had taken the island of Coudres only fifty miles downriver from Quebec, and that he was moving closer to the lie d'Orleans, directly opposite the city. Pushed on by a fair wind, and with his survey vessels in the van sounding the river and buoying the channel, Saunders made his way toward Quebec. For more than a week the fleet crept up the river. On deck the watch kept a keen eye for swirling eddies that might mark hidden rocks and shoals while swatting away hordes of "musketas." Summer thunderstorms swept across the river valley, and on occasion, defiant habitants took shots at survey vessels that prowled too close to shore.

  On June 26 the fleet hove to within view of the lie d'Orleans. Captain John Knox of the Forty-third Regiment described the bucolic scene: "Here we entertained with a most agreeable prospect of a delightful country on every side; windmills, water-mills, churches, chapels, and compact farmhouses, all built with stone, and covered, some with wood, others with straw. The lands appear to be every-where well cultivated, and, with the help of my glass, I can discern that they are sowed with flax, wheat, barley, pease, etc and the grounds are enclosed with wooden pales."29 Ahead of them lay the imposing heights of Quebec City. That night Wolfe issued orders to land on the island, and just before dawn small boats carrying rangers and light infantry assembled in the lee of the frigate Lowesdorf. Shallow-draft sloops, with crew standing forward heaving lead lines to sound the water's depth, approached the beach to lay down covering fire. About midnight forty rangers landed to secure the beachhead. As they moved beyond the river edge, they encountered a small force of local militia. After a brief firefight the Canadians disappeared into the woods. There was no other opposition.

  At first light Montcalm and his officers looked out over a vast British armada. They watched from the heights of the city as dozens of small boats, their dripping oars flashing in the morning sun, dashed quickly from ships to shore ferrying thousands of men and tons of equipment. The British had arrived, and they were prepared for a siege.30

  The relief ships that had dared the St. Lawrence in May not only had brought much needed supplies but had also delivered new orders from the king. "His Majesty having been informed of all that occurred last year in Canada" was pleased to promote "the Marquis de Montcalm... Lieutenant General of his armies." With his new rank Montcalm stood over Vaudreuil. Perhaps as a consolation to the governor, the king awarded him the Honorary Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis, commenting, with a bit of unwitting irony, that by this honor "the troops of the Colony [Troupes de la Marine], the farmers, [and] the Indians" will be impressed.31

  At Quebec Montcalm had soldiers from seven regular battalions totaling nearly four thousand men. Also present were one thousand men of the Troupes de la Marine, and nearly ten thousand militia drawn from the districts of Quebec, Trois-Riviere, and Montreal. Rounding out the force were as many as two thousand sailors and marines drawn from the idle ships anchored in the St. Charles River. Mingling about were several hundred Indians whose role was uncertain.32

  Brigadier General François de Lévis

  Lévis was Montcalm's second in command. In diplomacy and politics Lévis was everything that Montcalm was not. While he may have shared his commander's snobbish disdain for Canadians, he held his temper and his tongue. When Vaudreuil and Montcalm fell out, it was Lévis to whom they turned as a go-between. Bougainville was also at Quebec. The year before, Montcalm had sent him t
o Paris to make a case for the king to send more troops. Bougainville was unable to pry any loose. Indeed, in the face of France's commitments on the Continent, Bougainville's request to Nicolas-Rene Berryer, the minister of war, provoked the sarcastic reply "that one did not try to save the stables when the house was on fire."33 Etienne-Guillaume de Senezergues was third in command. Personally brave (allegedly to the point of foolhardiness), he had served with Lévis and was with him and Montcalm at Ticonderoga, where the general declared him to be the only senior officer fit to remain in Canada after the hostilities.

  Montcalm's chief of engineers, Nicholas Sarrebource de Pontleroy, had designed the defenses at Ticonderoga. Pontleroy reminded Montcalm that although Quebec's high bluffs offered protection against assault from the river side, the city stood open to attack from other points of the compass. Upriver was particularly troublesome since the ground in that direction, running along a small east-west ridge called Buttes a Neveau, was actually high enough to overlook the city's walls. On the other side of the ridge was an open rolling field known as the Plains of Abraham, after the farmer who once owned the land. Should an enemy come across the Plains and take the ridge, it might easily rain shot on the town and breech the walls. Pontleroy advised that ditches and other hasty outer defenses be erected immediately to keep the enemy at bay in that sector. Montcalm agreed, but with the British at his gates he had neither sufficient time nor enough men to mend the flaw. His best hope was that Wolfe would never be able to pass below the heights, get upriver, then land and advance on him from the south.

  Quebec was a two-tiered triangular cake.34 On the top layer stood the upper city protected on the land side by a stone wall nearly twenty feet high and several feet thick. The wall stretched from the edge of the bluff northwest to the steep slope down to the St. Charles River. Mackellar's report that the wall was unfinished on the side close to the St. Charles was erroneous. Two roads entered the city through the wall at the gates of St. Louis and St. John.

  Tucked under the high bluff overlooking the St. Lawrence was the cake's bottom tier: the lower city, la Basse-Ville. Only a few hundred feet wide, this portion of the city lay on an incline between the river and the foot of the high bluff. It was crowded with wharves, warehouses, shops, and the homes of workers. The small church of Notre Dame des Victoires, named in honor of the times when Quebec had been saved from English conquest, was near the center. The lower city was Montcalm's most exposed position, since it was within easy range of cannon from passing ships as well as any land batteries that the enemy might erect across the river. A steep and winding road coiled its way up the face of the escarpment connecting the lower and upper towns.

  The St. Lawrence River, with Quebec (upper left), the Beauport shore northeast of the city, and the lie d'Orleans (lower right).

  Montcalm assumed that the British would not risk a direct attack on the city. They might, he thought, attempt to advance upriver and attack from the south, as Pontleroy feared, but that would pose heavy risks. Vessels moving upstream would have to pass directly under Quebec's guns while coping with the St. Lawrence's strong currents. Such a maneuver would have to be timed to the tides, thus eliminating any chance of surprise, and since favorable tides and currents would only be available for a few hours each day, the attacker would most likely have to divide his force for passage, thus risking defeat. Even if an upriver landing could be effected, once in position at the top of the bluff the assaulting force ran the risk of being trapped between the walls of Quebec and a relief force from Montreal. Reviewing these options, Montcalm decided that the British would most likely attack him from the opposite direction, across the St. Charles River along the Beauport shore. To that location he sent the bulk of his troops.35

  The St. Charles River flows from a northwesterly direction, emptying into the St. Lawrence at the foot of Quebec's northwest face. Across the river and stretching along the edge of the north channel of the St. Lawrence (a relatively shallow body of water extending for twenty miles between lie d'Orleans and the mainland) are the Beauport flats. With a tidal range of more than twelve feet at low water, the flats are a broad muddy apron. Approximately five miles north of the St. Charles the Montmorency River cuts the shoreline.

  From its source at Lac des Neiges the Montmorency flows 120 miles southeast to cascade over a 272-foot-high cliff only a few hundred yards inland from its confluence with the St. Lawrence. Once over the falls, the river slices across the flat shore, presenting a natural barrier to an advancing army. The river protected the French left. Montcalm viewed the Beauport flats between the St. Charles and the Montmorency as the most likely place for an amphibious attack.36

  Montcalm fortified the Beauport line using the St. Charles and Mont­morency to anchor his flanks. On the right he built a temporary bridge across the St. Charles to link him with the city. He protected the exposed bridge with a series of floating batteries. Lévis commanded the left near the Montmorency and fortified his position by digging a series of entrenchments on the high land overlooking the tidal flats. Vaudreuil remained on the right near the St. Charles. Montcalm made his headquarters in the center.

  Before marshaling his assault, Wolfe organized his camp. A strict disciplinarian, the general entertained no romantic illusions about the character of his men. "The Infantry," he wrote his father "are easily put into disorder." "Their discipline [is] bad, and their valour precarious. . . . They frequently kill their officers through fear, and murder one another in their confusion." 37 To keep control, Wolfe demanded that his officers know their men by name, and he held them strictly accountable for the behavior of their troops. As usual, American rangers were a special problem, particularly when they insisted on firing off their muskets in camp. Wolfe ordered that no soldier was to fire his weapon in camp, and he insisted that musket flints be covered with cloth to prevent any accidental discharge. No soldier was to harm any habitant or seize and destroy private property without express orders. Exceptions could be made—"The General strictly forbids the Inhuman practice of Scalping except when the Enemy are Indians or Canadians dressed as Indians." Yet he warned his men, "If any violence is offered to women the Offender shall be punished with death." He told them, "The object of the campaign is to Compleat the conquest of Canada, and to finish the war in America."38

  Reams of orders gushed from Wolfe's headquarters. In the presence of his troops the general was energetic, firm, and determined, yet his precarious health began to deteriorate. Almost as soon as he stepped ashore he "was seized with a fit of the stone and made bloody water." For the moment, he endured the pain stoically and disciplined his mind to plan the attack.

  Wolfe's legendary prickliness is often attributed to his poor health. He suffered, he said, from rheumatism and gravel. His fits of illness often coincided with moments of great emotional stress. He fell ill, for example, in 1743 after the fighting at Dettingen, and later in Scotland, a place he loathed for both its people and its climate. Whether the causes were physical or psychosomatic at Quebec, Wolfe suffered pain and chronic illness.

  * * *

  Control of the St. Lawrence above and below the city was essential to British strategy. Vastly outnumbered by Saunders's fleet, Montcalm's pitiful naval force was powerless to challenge the English on the river. On the other hand, the dense mass of British ships tugging on their anchors in the stream presented an inviting target for a tactic of last resort: fire-ships. After dark on June 28 parties of French sailors went to work cramming seven vessels with combustible material. They stuffed cannon with powder and shot, then plugged the muzzles with wadding. Bundles of hay and dry timber were stowed below decks. Powder kegs and barrels of tar and pitch were placed in key locations. As the tide ebbed, these "infernal machines" were towed into the current. At the last possible moment French volunteers lashed the ships' wheels to keep the vessels on a steady course downstream toward the anchored British warships and transports. Below decks other crew scrambled to set fuses and kindle fires. As the flames lick
ed out of the holds, the men hurried over the side to boats waiting to take them to safety.

  Saunders expected that the French might try such a gambit. As a precaution, from the first night at anchorage he had assigned small craft to patrol around the men-of-war. He ordered his captains to send extra lookouts aloft and to reinforce the anchor watch. About midnight on the twenty-eighth, as the tide was running out, the alarm went up. From mastheads keen-eyed British seamen saw moving shadows and the faint glow of flames drifting out of the St. Charles. The French crews had set the fires too soon, allowing Saunders's men ample time to prepare for the attack. As the vessels drew nearer, flames shot up the rigging as cannon blew apart, hurling iron fragments in all directions. The blazing ships bore down on the British fleet, but Saunders's men did their work well. Officers bellowed to the small boats to grapple and tow the menacing "infernals" away from the fleet. On the decks of the British ships marine drummers called all hands to stations. Gangs of sailors heaved around the capstans hauling on anchor cables to move the ships away, while others climbed over the bulwarks and stood in the chains with long pikes preparing to fend off the fiery craft. Some crews had no time to haul the anchor, and seamen went forward with axes to cut the cables and let their vessel drift out of harm's way. Not a single British ship was damaged. At daybreak men crowded the rails to look over the St. Lawrence at the charred French hulks. Some had stranded on shore, while others drifted harmlessly downstream.

  As the fireships smoldered, Wolfe made his first move off lie d'Orleans. The heights at Point Lévis, directly across from the city, were well within cannon range of Quebec. Wisely preferring not to divide his regular forces, Montcalm had assigned local militia and Indians to the defense of the point. Late in the afternoon light infantry, rangers, and a single regiment under Monckton's command crossed over from lie d'Orleans and landed at Beaumont a few miles to the east of Point Lévis. Despite stiff resistance, Monckton's force took the point with a loss of only thirty men. As the French defenders withdrew, rangers scurried after them and returned with six scalps. By the morning of the thirtieth Wolfe's engineers and artillerymen were sighting their batteries on targets across the river. In the meantime Saunders steered his fleet within range of the lower town. Wolfe ordered Carleton to finish fortifying the sprawling encampment on lie d'Orleans while he crossed over to Lévis. From the heights the general got a good view of Quebec. As he scanned across the river, he saw Montcalm's troops working to improve what was already a formidable set of defenses. He urged Monckton to bring the guns ahead while he gave thought to an assault at Beauport.