At Gross-Morau the King heard these different accounts. As there were no more Russians to combat, he was at liberty to direct all his efforts against Saxony; therefore, instead of taking the route to Koepenick, he took that of Lueben. Marshal Daun, however, had followed the King into Lusatia. He then approached Torgau, and, as it was known that he had left Laudon at Loewenberg, General Goltz had orders to return into Silesia, to oppose the attempts of the Austrians with his utmost abilities. On the 22d the army of the King arrived at Jessen. The troops of the Prince de Deuxponts extended wholly along the left shore of the Elbe. He and the greatest part of his forces were at Prata, opposite Wittenberg; this fortress he evacuated as soon as the van of the Prussians appeared near the town.

The sudden changes that had happened during this campaign required new measures to be taken and other dispositions to be made. The Prussians had not a single magazine in all Saxony. The army of the King existed from day to day; he drew some little flour from Spandau, but this began to fail; add to this, the enemy occupied all Saxony. Daun had arrived at Torgau, the troops of the circles held the course of the Elbe, and the Duke of Wurtemberg occupied the environs of Dessau. To free himself from so many enemies, the King ordered Hulsen and the Prince of Wurtemberg to march to Magdeburg, there to pass the Elbe, and escort the boats loaded with flour which were to come to Dessau, where the King resolved to pass the Elbe with the right of his army, and afterward join Hulsen.

In the principality of Halberstadt the Prince of Wurtemberg had a rencounter with a detachment of the Duke, his brother, which was entirely destroyed. The Duke returned with all speed through Merseburg and Leipsic to Naumburg. The right of the King passed the Elbe on the 26th, and joined Hulsen and the Prince near Dessau. On this movement the Prince de Deuxponts abandoned the banks of the Elbe, and retired through Duben to Leipsic. He had left Ried in the rear, in a forest between Oranienbaum and Kemberg, where this officer had taken post, with little judgment; having garnished the woods with his hussars, and posted his pandoors in the plain.

The van of the Prussians attacked Ried; his scattered troops were beaten in detail and his corps almost destroyed. Of thirty-six hundred men he could only assemble one thousand seven hundred, at Pretsch, to which place he was driven after the action.

When the army of the King had obtained Kemberg, Zieten, who with the left had stopped the enemy at Wittenberg, passed the Elbe and joined the main army. Marshal Daun had, however, come up with Lacy at Torgau. As certain information was received that his vanguard had taken the road to Eulenburg, he could be supposed to have no other intention than that of joining the army of the circles. On this the army marched to Duben, to oppose a junction so prejudicial to the interests of the King.

Here arriving, a battalion of Croats was found, who were all either taken or put to the sword. At this place the King formed a magazine: it seemed the most convenient post because it is a peninsula and nearly surrounded by the Mulde. Some redoubts were constructed; and ten battalions under Sydow were left for its defence.

The army of the King thence marched to Eulenburg. The Austrian troops that had encamped in that vicinity retired, through Mochrena to Torgau, with so much precipitate haste that they abandoned a part of their tents. The army encamped with the right at Thalwitz and the left at Eulenburg. Hulsen was obliged to pass the Mulde with some battalions. He took a position between Belzen and Gostevra, opposite the Prince de Deuxponts, whose army was at Taucha. Under the present circumstances the first thing necessary was to drive the troops of the circles to a distance, as well because they were on the rear of the Prussians as to prevent their union with the Austrians. This cost but little trouble; Hulsen gave them the alarm, and they decamped the same night, passed the Pleisse, and then the Elster, and retreated to Zeitz. Major Quintus, with his free battalion, vigorously charged their rear-guard; from which he took four hundred prisoners. After so happily terminating this expedition, the Prussians recovered possession of Leipsic, and Hulsen rejoined the army.

Every event hitherto (November) had turned to the advantage of the King. The irruption of the Russians and the taking of Berlin, which might appear to induce consequences so great, ended in a manner less afflicting than could have been expected. Contributions and money only were lost. The enemy was driven from the frontiers of Brandenburg. Wittenberg and Leipsic were recovered; and the troops of the circle were repulsed to a distance too considerable for it to be feared they should join the Imperialists with promptitude; but all was not yet done, and the projects that remained were the most difficult part of the whole.

The Russians kept at Landsberg on the Wartha and there might remain peaceful spectators of what should pass in Saxony. The King, however, was informed that other reasons engaged them not to march to too great a distance; for their design was, should the Austrians obtain any advantages over the army of the King, or should Marshal Daun maintain Torgau, to reenter the electorate of Brandenburg, and, conjointly with the Austrians, to take up their quarters on the banks of the Elbe. The consequence of such a project would have been fatally desperate to Prussia. By this position they would cut off the army, not only from Silesia and Pomerania, but from Berlin itself—that nursing mother which supplied clothing, arms, baggage, and every necessary for the men. Add to which the troops would have no quarters to take except beyond the Mulde, between the Pleisse, the Saale, the Elster, and the Unstrut. This would have been a space too narrow to supply the army with subsistence through the winter. And whence should magazines for the spring, uniforms, and recruits be obtained?

The army thus pressed, and thrown back upon the allies, would have starved them by starving itself.

Without any profound military knowledge every rational man would comprehend that, had the King remained quiet during autumn, and formed no new attempts, he would but have delivered himself, tied hand and foot, into the power of the enemy. Let us still further add that the provisions that had been deposited at Duben scarcely would supply the troops for the space of a month; that the frost, which began to be felt, would soon impede the navigation of the Elbe; consequently the boats could no longer bring provisions from Magdeburg; and, in fine, that the very last distress must have succeeded had not good measures been taken to remove the enemy, and gain ground on which the army might encamp and subsist.

After having maturely examined and weighed all these reasons, it was determined to commit the fortune of Prussia to the issue of a battle, if no other means by manoeuvring could be found of driving Marshal Daun from his post at Torgau. It will be proper to observe that the fears with which he might be inspired could only relate to two objects: the first, that of gaining Dresden before him, in which there was but a feeble garrison; and the second, of approaching the Elbe and disturbing him concerning subsistence, which was brought from Dresden by the river. It must be confessed that this last manoeuvre could not give him much uneasiness, because he was entirely master of the right shore of the Elbe, and might bring the provisions he wanted by land when they could no more be transported by water.

The greatest difficulty in executing this plan was that two things nearly contradictory were to be reconciled: the march of the army to the Elbe, and the security of the magazine. Not to forget all rule, the army of the King, in advancing, ought not to depart too far from the line of defence by which it covered its subsistence; and the motion it was to make upon the Elbe threw it entirely to the right and uncovered its rear. It was still endeavored to reconcile this enterprise on the enemy with the security of the magazine. The King proposed to incline to Schilda, that he might prove the countenance of Daun, and attack him at Torgau should he obstinately persist in remaining there. As it was but one march to Schilda, should the marshal retire on this motion, there was no fear that he should attempt Duben, and, if he remained at Torgau, by attacking him on the morrow, it seemed apparent that he would have so many occupations he would have no time to form projects against the magazine.

Everything conspiring to confirm the King in his resolution, he, on November 2d, marched the army to Schilda. During the whole route he continued with the vanguard of the hussars, that he might observe to which side the advanced posts of the enemy retired as they were repulsed by the troops of the King. This did not long remain a subject of doubt. The detachments all withdrew to Torgau, except Brentano, who was attacked at Belgern, and taken in such a direction that he could only escape toward Strebla. Kleist took eight hundred prisoners. The army of the King encamped from Schilda through Probsthain to Langen-Reichenbach, and Marshal Daun remained firm and motionless at Torgau. There no longer was any doubt that he had received positive orders from his court to maintain his post at any price.

The following dispositions were made for the attack on the morrow. The right of the Imperialists was supported behind the ponds of Groswich; their centre covered the hill of Sueptitz; the left terminated beyond Zinna, extending toward the ponds of Torgau. Exclusive of this, Ried observed the Prussian army from beside the forest of Torgau. Lacy, with a reserve of twenty thousand men, covered the causeway and the ponds that lie at the extremity of the place where the Imperialists had supported their left. Still the ground on which the enemy stood wanted depth, and the lines had not an interval of above three hundred paces. This was a very favorable circumstance for the Prussians; because, by attacking the centre in front and rear, the foe would be placed between two fires, and could not avoid being beaten.

To produce this effect the King divided his army into two bodies. The one destined to approach from the Elbe, after having passed the forest of Torgau, was to attack the enemy in the rear, from the hill of Sueptitz; while the other, following the route of Eulenburg to Torgau, was to fix a battery on the eminence of Groswich, and at the same time attack the village of Sueptitz. These two corps, acting in concert, must necessarily divide the centre of the Austrians; after which it would be easy to drive the remnant toward the Elbe, where the ground was one continued gentle declivity, excellently advantageous to the Prussians, and must have procured them a complete victory.

The King began his march at the dawn of day, on the 3d, and was followed by thirty battalions and fifty squadrons of his left. The troops crossed the forest of Torgau in three columns. The route of the first line of infantry led through Mochrena, Wildenhayn, Groswich, and Neiden; the route of the second through Pechhutte, Jaegerteich, and Bruckendorf, to Elsnich. The cavalry that composed the third column passed the wood of Wildenhayn, to march to Vogelsang. Zieten at the same time led the right of the army, consisting of thirty battalions and seventy squadrons, and filed off on the road that goes from Eulenburg to Torgau. The corps headed by the King met with General Ried, posted at the skirts of the forest of Torgau, with two regiments of hussars, as many dragoons, and three battalions of pandoors. Some volleys of artillery were fired, and he fell back on the right of the Imperialists.

Near Wildenhayn there is a small plain in the forest, where ten battalions of grenadiers were seen, well posted, who affected to dispute the passage of the Prussians. They made some discharges of artillery on the column of the King, which were answered by the Prussians. A line of infantry was formed to charge, but they reclined toward their army. The hussars brought word at the same time that the regiment of St. Ignon was in the wood, between the two columns of infantry, and that it had even dismounted. It was incontinently attacked; and, as these dragoons found no outlet for escape, the whole regiment was destroyed. These grenadiers and this regiment were mutually to depart on an expedition against Dobeln, and the commanding officer, St. Ignon, who was taken, bitterly complained that Ried had not informed him of the approach of the Russians. This trifling affair only cost the troops a few moments; they pursued their road, and the heads of the columns arrived, at one o'clock, on the farther side of the forest, in the small plain of Neiden.

Here were seen some dragoons of Bathiani, and four battalions, who coming from the village of Elsnich made some discharges of artillery at a venture and fired with their small arms. This no doubt was a motion of surprise, occasioned perhaps by having seen some Prussian hussars. They retired upon a height behind the defile of Neiden. In this place is a large marsh, which begins at Groswich and goes to the Elbe, and over which there is no other passage but two narrow causeways. Had this corps taken advantage of its ground there certainly would have been no battle. However determined the King might be to attack the Imperialists, such an attack would have become impossible: he must have renounced his project, and returned full speed to regain Eulenburg.

But it happened far otherwise; these battalions hastened to rejoin the army, to which they were invited by a heavy cannonade which they heard from the side of Zieten. The King supposed, as was very probable, that the troops of Zieten already were in action with the enemy. This induced him to pass the defile of Neiden with his hussars and infantry; for the cavalry which ought to have proceeded was not yet come up. The King glided into a little wood, and personally reconnoitred the position of the enemy. He judged there was no ground on which it was proper to form, in presence of the Austrians, but by passing this small wood, which would in some measure conceal his troops, and whence a considerable ravine might be gained, to protect the soldiers, while they formed, from the enemy's artillery. This ravine was not indeed above eight hundred paces from the Austrian army; but the remainder of the ground, which from Sueptitz descended like a glacis to the Elbe, was such that, had the army here been formed, one-half must have been cut off before it could approach the enemy.

Marshal Daun scarcely could credit the report that the Prussians were marching to the attack; nor was it till after reiterated information that he ordered his second line to face about and that the greatest part of the artillery of the first line was brought to the second. Whatever precaution the King might take to cover the march of his troops, the enemy, who had four hundred pieces of artillery in battery, could not fail to kill many of his men. Eight hundred soldiers fell, and thirty cannon were destroyed, with their horses, train, and gunners, before the columns arrived at the place where they were to be put in order of battle. The King formed his infantry in three lines, each of ten battalions, and began the attack. Had his cavalry been present, he would have thrown two regiments of dragoons into a bottom, that was on the right of his infantry, to cover its flank; but the Prince of Holstein, whose phlegm was invincible, did not come up till an hour after the action had begun. According to the regulations that had been agreed on, the attacks were to be made at the same time, and the result ought to have been that either the King or Zieten should penetrate through the centre of the enemy at Sueptitz. But General Zieten, instead of attacking, amused himself for a considerable time with a body of pandoors, whom he encountered in the forest of Torgau. He next cannonaded the corps of Lacy, who as we have said was posted behind the ponds of Torgau. In a word, the orders were not executed; the King attacked singly, without being seconded by Zieten, and without his cavalry being present. This still did not prevent him from pursuing his purpose. The first line of the King left the ravine and boldly marched to the enemy; but the prodigious fire of the Imperial artillery, and the descent of the ground, were too disadvantageous. Most of the Prussian generals, commanders of battalions, and soldiers, were killed or wounded. The line fell back, and returned in some disorder. By this the Austrian carbineers profited, pursued, and did not retreat till they had received some discharges from the second line. This line also approached, was disturbed, and, after a more bloody and obstinate combat than the preceding, was in like manner repulsed. Buelow, who led it to the attack, was taken.

At length the much-expected Prince of Holstein and his cavalry arrived. The third line of the Prussians was already in action; the regiment of Prince Henry, attacking the enemy, was in turn charged by the Austrian cavalry, and supported by the hussars of Hund, Reitzenstein, and Prittwitz, against all the efforts of the enemy to break its ranks. The dreadful fire of the artillery of the Austrians had too hastily consumed the ammunition. They had left their reserve of cannon on the other side of the Elbe, and their close lines did not admit of ammunition-wagons to pass and make proper distribution to the batteries.

The King profited by the moment when their fire slackened, and ordered the dragoons of Bayreuth to attack their infantry. They were led on with so much valor and impetuosity by Buelow that, in less than three minutes, they took prisoners the regiments of the Emperor, Neuperg, Geisruck, and Imperial-Bayreuth. The cuirassiers of Spaen and Frederick at the same time made an assault on that part of the enemy's infantry which was most to the right of the Prussians, put it to the rout, and brought back many prisoners. The Prince of Holstein was placed to cover the left flank of the infantry, which his right wing joined, and his left inclined toward the Elbe. The enemy soon presented himself before the Prince, with eighty squadrons; the right toward the Elbe, the left toward Zinna. O'Donnel commanded the Imperial cavalry. Had he resolutely attacked the Prince, the battle must have been lost without resource, but he was respectful of a ditch of a foot and a half wide, which those who skirmished were forbidden to pass. The enemy believed it to be considerable, because the Prussians made a pretence of fearing to cross it; and the Imperialists remained, in the presence of the Prince, inactive.

The dragoons of Bayreuth had just cleared the height of Sueptitz. The King sent thither the regiment of Maurice, which had not engaged, and a brave and worthy officer, Lestwitz, brought up a corps of a thousand men, which he had formed from the different regiments that had been repulsed in previous attacks. With these troops the Prussians seized on the eminence of Sueptitz, and there fixed themselves, with all the cannon they could hastily collect. Zieten at length, having arrived at his place of destination, attacked on his side. It began to be dark, and to prevent Prussians from combating Prussians, the infantry of Sueptitz beat the march. They were presently joined by Zieten; and scarcely had the Prussians begun to form with order on the ground before Lacy came up, with his corps, to dislodge the King's forces. He came too late: he was twice repulsed. Offended at his ill-reception, at half-past nine he retired toward Torgau. The Prussians and Imperialists were so near each other, among the vineyards of Sueptitz, that many officers and soldiers, on both parts, wandering in the dark, were made prisoners after the battle was over and all was tranquil. The King himself, as he was repairing to the village of Neiden, as well to expedite orders relative to the victory as to send intelligence of it through Brandenburg and Silesia, heard the sound of a carriage near the army. The word was demanded, and the reply was "Austrian." The escort of the King fell on and took two field-pieces and a battalion of pandoors, that had lost themselves in the night. A hundred paces farther he came up with a troop of horse; that again gave the word "Austrian carbineers." The King's escort attacked and dispersed them in the forest. Those who were taken related that they had lost their road with Ried in the wood, and that they had imagined the Imperialists remained masters of the field.

The whole forest that had been crossed by the Prussians before the battle, and beside which the King was then riding, was full of large fires. What these might mean no one could divine, and some hussars were sent to gain information. They returned, and related that soldiers sat round the fires, some in blue uniforms and others in white. As intelligence more exact was necessary, officers were then sent, who learned a very singular fact, of which I doubt whether any example in history may be found: The soldiers were of both armies, and had sought refuge in the woods, where they had passed an act of neutrality, to wait till fortune had decided in favor of the Prussians or Imperialists; and they had mutually agreed to follow the victorious party.

This battle cost the Prussians thirteen thousand men, three thousand of whom were killed, and three thousand fell into the enemy's hands, during the first attacks, while the Austrians were victorious; Buelow and Finck were among these. The breast of the King was grazed by a ball, and the margrave, Charles, received a contusion: several generals were wounded. The battle was obstinately disputed by both armies; its fury cost the Imperialists twenty thousand men, eight thousand of whom were taken, with four generals. They lost twenty-seven pair of colors and fifty cannon. Marshal Daun was wounded at the commencement of the battle.

When the enemy saw the first line of the Prussians give ground, with hopes too frivolous, they despatched couriers to Vienna and Warsaw to announce their victory; but the same night they abandoned the field of battle, and crossed the Elbe at Torgau. On the morning of the following day (the 4th), Torgau capitulated to General Hulsen. The Prince of Wurtemberg was sent over the Elbe to pursue the foe, who fled in disorder: he augmented the number of prisoners already made. The Imperialists would have been totally defeated had not General Beck, who was not in the engagement, covered their retreat by posting his corps between Arzberg and Triestewitz, behind the Landgraben. It was wholly in the power of Daun to have avoided a battle. Had he placed Lacy behind the defile of Neiden, instead of the ponds of Torgau, which six battalions would have been sufficient to defend, his camp would have been impregnable, so great may the consequences be of the least inadvertency in the difficult trade of war.

When the Russians were informed of the fate of the day of Torgau, they retired to Thorn, where they crossed the Vistula. The army of the King, on the 5th, advanced to Strebla, and on the 6th to Meissen. The Imperialists had left Lacy on that side of the Elbe, that he might cover the bottom of Plauen before their arrival. He attempted to dispute the defile of Zehren with the vanguard; but, when he saw the cavalry in motion to turn him by Lommatsch, he fled to Meissen, where he crossed the Tripsche; but, in spite of the celerity of his march, his rear-guard was attacked, and lost four hundred men. The pursuit was continued that an attempt might be made, favored by the fears and disorder of the foe, to pass the bottom of Plauen with him and seize on this important post. But no diligence could accomplish this; the troops were two hours too late; for, on arriving at Ukersdorf, another corps of the enemy was discovered, that had already taken post at the Windberg, the right of which extended to the Trompeter Schloesgen. This was the corps of Haddick, who, with the Prince de Deuxponts, quitting Leipsic, had marched to Zeitz, and afterward to Rosswein. No sooner were they informed of the Imperial defeat at Torgau than they diligently advanced to cover Dresden before the Prussians could come up.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] The Hanoverian nobility, who hoped thereby to protect their property, were implicated in this affair. They were shortly afterward well and deservedly punished, being laid under contribution by the French.



CONQUEST OF CANADA

VICTORY OF WOLFE AT QUEBEC

A.D. 1759

A.G. BRADLEY

With the opening of the Seven Years' War the two races, French and English, once more began to contend for the prize of empire in the New World. For a while the advantage in the struggle was on the side of France, though the preponderance of population was vastly on the side of the English colonies. Louis XV, however, had one general in Canada worthy of the gallant race from which he had sprung, and who strenuously endeavored to uphold the fortunes of his country. This was the Marquis de Montcalm, a cultured and far-seeing French nobleman, whose ability and enthusiasm in the profession of arms had procured for him the chief military command in Canada, and who was now seeking to expel the English from the colonial possessions of France on the Continent.

But, unfortunately for his country, Montcalm was ill-supported by Old France, and his difficulties were increased by the maladministration of affairs in the colony. Despite these drawbacks, he was for some years the means of protracting the gallant struggle in America and of bringing many disasters on the English arms.

Concentrating his forces in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain, he attacked Fort William Henry, on Lake George, and with a body of Indian auxiliaries from the Ottawa forced the English to capitulate. The victory was marred by horrible Indian atrocities on the English prisoners of war, which Montcalm was unable to prevent. During the year 1757 Montcalm acted solely on the defensive, while the English, having incompetent generals, accomplished little and failed in an attempt to wrest Louisburg from the French. The following year, however, William Pitt, "the Great English Commoner," was called to the councils of his nation, and infused new vigor into the war which had now been formally declared between the two countries. Pitt, aiming at the extinction of French power in America, fitted out a fleet of one hundred fifty sail, under Admiral Boscawen, with a land force of some fourteen thousand men, under General Amherst and Brigadier-General James Wolfe, and despatched both to Canada.

The first operation was the siege of Louisburg, which surrendered with about five thousand prisoners, and in the capture of which young Wolfe greatly distinguished himself. Later in the year the French were compelled to abandon Fort Duquesne, in the Ohio Valley, which the English now named Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac (Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these losses was disheartening to the French, though before the season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759 opened, the English were ready to resume operations with spirit and effect. Amherst's army advanced upon Crown Point and Ticonderoga, from which the French retired, and Sir William Johnson captured Niagara and drove the French from the Lakes. Wolfe, now general of the forces of the St. Lawrence, sailed in June with his army from Louisburg to Quebec. The story of this eventful expedition and its result here given is by the able pen of the historian A.G. Bradley.

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 Ile 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.

Let us now turn for a moment to Montcalm and see what he has been doing all this time to prepare for the attack. It was an accepted axiom in Canada that no armament strong enough to seriously threaten Quebec could navigate the St. Lawrence. In the face of expected invasion it was the Lake George and Champlain route that mostly filled the public mind. Bougainville, however, had returned from France early in May with the startling news that a large expedition destined for Quebec was already on the sea. A former opinion of this able officer's declared that three or four thousand men could hold the city against all comers. There was now four times that strength waiting for Wolfe, while his own, so far as numbers went, we know already. Eighteen transport ships, carrying supplies and some slight reenforcements, had slipped past the English cruisers in the fogs, and brought some comfort to Montcalm. The question now was how best to defend Quebec, as well as make good the two land approaches at Ticonderoga and Lake Ontario respectively.

For the defence of the city, when every able-bodied militia-man had been called out, nearly sixteen thousand troops of all arms would be available. About the disposition of these and the plan of defence there was much discussion. Montcalm himself was for a long time undecided. The alternative plans do not concern us here; the one finally adopted is alone to the point. Everyone knows that the ancient capital of Canada is one of the most proudly placed among the cities of the earth. But it may be well to remind those who have not seen it, that it occupies the point of a lofty ridge, forming the apex of the angle made by the confluence of the St. Charles River and the St. Lawrence. Westward from the city this ridge falls so nearly sheer into the St. Lawrence for several miles that, watched by a mere handful of men, it was impregnable. Moreover, the river suddenly narrows to a breadth of three-quarters of a mile opposite the town, whose batteries were regarded as being fatal to any attempt of an enemy to run past them. On the other side of the town the St. Charles River, coming in from the northwest immediately below its walls, formed a secure protection.

Montcalm, however, decided to leave only a small garrison in the city itself and go outside it for his main defence. Now, from the eastern bank of the mouth of the St. Charles, just below the city, there extends in an almost straight line along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence a continuous ridge, the brink, in fact, of a plateau, at no point far removed from the water's edge. Six miles away this abruptly terminates in the gorge of the Montmorency River, which, rushing tumultuously toward the St. Lawrence, makes that final plunge on to its shore level which is one of the most beautiful objects in a landscape teeming with natural and human interest. Along the crown of this six-mile ridge, known in history as "the Beauport lines," Montcalm decided to make his stand. So, throughout the long days of May and June the French devoted themselves to rendering impregnable from the front a position singularly strong in itself, while the Montmorency and its rugged valley protected the only flank which was exposed to attack. Below him spread the river, here over two miles in width from shore to shore, with the western point of the island of Orleans overlapping his left flank. Above the woods of this long, fertile island, then the garden of Canada, the French, upon June 27th, first caught sight of the pennons flying from the topmasts of the English battle-ships, and before evening they witnessed the strange sight of red-coated infantry swarming over its well-tilled fields.

Wolfe had not much time that evening to consider the situation, which might well have appalled a less stout heart than his, for the troops had scarcely landed when a sudden summer storm burst upon the scene, churned the river into angry waves, broke some of the smaller ships from their moorings, casting them upon the rocks, and staving in many of the boats and rafts. The people of Quebec, who for weeks had been urging upon the Divinity in their peculiar way that they, his chosen people, were in danger, would not have been Canadian Catholics of their generation had they not been jubilant at this undoubted sign of divine intervention. But Montcalm was the last man to presume on such favor by any lack of energy. The very next night the British, having in the mean time pitched their camp upon the Isle of Orleans, were thrown into no small alarm by the descent of a fleet of fire-ships.

The only men awake were the guards and sentries at the point, and as the matches were not applied to the drifting hulks till they were close at hand, the sudden effect in the darkness of the night upon the soldiers' nerves was more than they could stand, having beheld nothing like it in their lives, and they rushed in much confusion on the sleeping camp, causing still more there. For it was not alone the flames and the explosives that were a cause of perturbation, but a hail of grape-shot and bullets from the igniting guns poured hurtling through the trees. The chief object of the fire-ships, however, was the fleet which lay in the channel between the Isle of Orleans and the shore, and toward it they came steadily drifting. Knox describes the pandemonium as awful, and the sight as inconceivably superb of these large burning ships, crammed with every imaginable explosive and soaked from their mast-heads to their water-line in pitch and tar. It was no new thing, however, to the gallant sailors, who treated the matter as a joke, grappling fearlessly with the hissing, spitting demons, and towing them ashore. "Damme, Jack," they shouted, "didst ever take h—ll in tow before?"

This exploit seems to have been a venture of Vaudreuil's, and its failure, an extremely expensive one, cost that lively egotist and his friends a severe pang. The next day Wolfe published his first manifesto to the Canadian people. "We are sent by the English King," it ran, "to conquer this province, but not to make war upon women and children, the ministers of religion, or industrious peasants. We lament the sufferings which our invasion may inflict upon you: but if you remain neutral, we proffer you safety in person and property and freedom in religion. We are masters of the river; no succor can reach you from France. General Amherst, with a large army, assails your southern frontier. Your cause is hopeless, your valor useless. Your nation have been guilty of great cruelties to our unprotected settlers, but we seek not revenge. We offer you the sweets of peace amid the horrors of war. England, in her strength, will befriend you; France, in her weakness, leaves you to your fate."

Wolfe could hardly have felt the confidence he here expressed. The longer he looked upon the French position the less he must have liked it, and the larger must Amherst and his eventual cooperation have loomed in his mind as a necessary factor to success. But would Amherst get through to Montreal and down the St. Lawrence in time to be of use before the short season had fled? Those who were familiar with the difficulties would certainly have discouraged the hope which Wolfe for a time allowed himself to cherish; and Wolfe, though he admired his friend and chief, did not regard celerity of movement as his strongest point.

About the first move, however, in the game Wolfe had to play there could be no possible doubt, and that was the occupation of Point Levis. This was the high ground immediately facing Quebec, where the river, narrowing to a width of twelve hundred yards, brought the city within cannon-shot from the southern bank. It was the only place, in fact, from which it could be reached. It is said Montcalm had been anxious to occupy it, and intrench it with four thousand men, but was overruled on the supposition that the upper town, about which official Quebec felt most concern, would be outside its range of fire. If this was so, they were soon to be undeceived.

The occupation of Point Levis by Monckton's brigade, which Wolfe now ordered on that service, need not detain us. They crossed from the camp of Orleans to the village of Beaumont, which was seized with slight resistance. Thence moving on along the high road to Point Levis, they found the church and village occupied by what Knox, who was there, estimates at a thousand riflemen and Indians. The Grenadiers charging the position in front, and the Highlanders and light infantry taking it in the rear, it was stormed with a loss of thirty men, and Monckton then occupied a position which, so far as artillery fire was concerned, had Quebec at its mercy. The brigadier, who had fully expected to find French guns there, at once began to intrench himself on this conspicuous spot, while floating batteries now pushed out from Quebec and began throwing shot and shell up at his working-parties, till Saunders sent a frigate forward to put an end to what threatened to be a serious annoyance.

The French had changed their minds about the danger of Monckton's guns, though not a shot had yet been fired, and agitated loudly for a sortie across the river. Montcalm thought poorly of the plan; but a miscellaneous force of fifteen hundred Canadians, possessed of more ardor than cohesion, insisted on attempting a night assault. They landed some way up the river, but did not so much as reach the British position. The difficulties of a combined midnight movement were altogether too great for such irregulars, and they ended by firing upon one another in the dark and stampeding for their boats, with a loss of seventy killed and wounded.

Two brigades were now in midstream on the Isle of Orleans and one on Point Levis. Landing artillery and stores, intrenching both positions, and mounting siege-guns at the last-named one consumed the first few days of July. Wolfe's skill in erecting and firing batteries had been abundantly demonstrated at Louisburg; and though his head quarters were on the island, he went frequently to superintend the preparations for the bombardment of Quebec. On July 12th a rocket leaped into the sky from Wolfe's camp. It was the signal for the forty guns and mortars that had been mounted on Point Levis to open on the city that Vaudreuil and his friends had fondly thought was out of range. The first few shots may have encouraged the delusion, as they fell short; but the gunners quickly got their distance, and then began that storm of shot and shell which rained upon the doomed city, with scarce a respite, for upward of eight weeks.

Houses, churches, and monasteries crashed and crumbled beneath the pitiless discharge. The great cathedral, where the memories and the trophies of a century's defiance of the accursed heretic had so thickly gathered, was gradually reduced to a skeleton of charred walls. The church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, erected in gratitude for the delivery of the city from the last and only previous attack upon it sixty years before, was one of the first buildings to suffer from the far more serious punishment of this one. Wolfe, though already suffering from more than his chronic ill-health, was ubiquitous and indefatigable; now behind Monckton's guns at Point Levis, now with Townshend's batteries at Montmorency, now up the river, ranging with his glass those miles of forbidding cliffs which he may already have begun to think he should one day have to climb. Some of Saunders' ships were in the Basin, between Orleans and Quebec, and frequently engaged with Montcalm's floating batteries; while in the mean time the roar of artillery from a dozen different quarters filled the simmering July days, and lit the short summer nights with fiery shapes, and drew in fitful floods the roving thunder-clouds that at this season of the year in North America are apt to lurk behind the serenest sky.

Fighting at close quarters there was, too, in plenty, though of an outpost and backwoods kind. Bois Herbert, with his painted Canadians and Abernakis Indians, and Stark and young Rogers with their colonial rangers—Greek against Greek—scalped each other with a hereditary ferocity that English and French regulars knew nothing of. In bringing a fleet up to Quebec, British sailors had already performed one feat pronounced impossible by Canadian tradition. They now still further upset their enemies' calculations by running the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec and placing the Sutherland, with several smaller ships, at some distance up the river. This cost Montcalm six hundred men, whom he had to send under Dumas to watch the squadron. But all this brought the end no nearer. Time was exceeding precious, and July was almost out. Necessary messages were continually passing under flags of truce, and superfluous notes of defiance sometimes accompanied them. "You may destroy the town," said De Ramezay to Wolfe, "but you will never get inside it." "I will take Quebec," replied the fiery stripling, "if I stay here till November."

Through the whole weary month of August little occurred that the exigencies of our space would justify recording. Montcalm considered himself safe, and he even allowed two thousand Canadians to leave for the harvest. Wolfe had a thousand men of his small force sick or wounded in hospital. Amherst, it was reported, had taken Ticonderoga, but there was little likelihood of his getting through to their assistance. Prideaux, in the Far West, as it then was, had captured Niagara. It was a great success, but it in no way helped Wolfe. It must not be supposed, however, that August had passed away in humdrum fashion. The guns had roared with tireless throats, and the lower town was a heap of ruins. Far away down both banks of the St. Lawrence the dogs of war had raged through seigniories and hamlets. Between the upper and the nether millstone of Wolfe's proclamations and Montcalm's vengeance, the wretched peasantry were in a sore plight. Raided through and through by the fierce guerillas of North American warfare, swept bare of grain and cattle for Wolfe's army, the fugitives from smoking farms and hamlets were glad to seek refuge in the English lines, where the soldiers generously shared with them their meagre rations. More than one expedition had been sent up the river. Admiral Holmes, with over twenty ships, was already above the town, and had driven the French vessels, which had originally taken refuge there, to discharge their crews and run up shallow tributaries.

Wolfe's intention now was to place every man that he could spare on board the ships in the upper river, and his entire force was reduced by death, wounds, and sickness to under seven thousand men. On September 3d, with slight annoyance from an ill-directed cannon fire, he removed the whole force at Montmorency across the water to the camps of Orleans or Point Levis. On the following day all the troops at both these stations which were not necessary for their protection were paraded; for what purpose no one knew, least of all the French, who from their lofty lines could mark every movement in the wide panorama below, and were sorely puzzled and perturbed. Some great endeavor was in the wind, beyond a doubt; but both Wolfe and his faithful ally, the admiral, did their utmost to disguise its import. And for this very reason it would be futile, even if necessary, to follow the fluctuating manoeuvres that for the next few days kept the enemy in constant agitation: the sudden rage of batteries here, the threatening demonstrations of troop-laden boats there, the constant and bewildering movement of armed ships at every point. It was well designed and industriously maintained, for the sole purpose of harassing the French and covering Wolfe's real intention.

On the night of September 4th the general was well enough to dine with Monckton's officers at Point Levis, but the next day he was again prostrate with illness, to the great anxiety of his army. He implored the doctor to "patch him up sufficiently for the work in hand; after that nothing mattered." Chronic gravel and rheumatism, with a sharp low fever, aggravated by a mental strain of the severest kind, all preying on a sickly frame, were what the indomitable spirit there imprisoned had to wrestle with. On the 6th, however, Wolfe struggled up, and during that day and the next superintended the march of his picked column, numbering some four thousand men, up the south bank of the river. Fording, near waist-deep, the Etchemain River, they were received beyond its mouth by the boats of the fleet, and, as each detachment arrived, conveyed on board. The Forty-eighth, however, seven hundred strong, were left, under Colonel Burton, near Point Levis to await orders.

The fleet, with Wolfe and some thirty-six hundred men on board, now moved up to Cap Rouge, behind which, at the first dip in the high barrier of cliffs, was Bougainville with fifteen hundred men (soon afterward increased), exclusive of three hundred serviceable light cavalry. The cove here was intrenched, and the French commander was so harried with feigned attacks that he and his people had no rest. At the same time, so well was the universal activity maintained that Montcalm, eight miles below, was led to expect a general attack at the mouth of the Charles River, under the city. Throughout the 8th and 9th the weather was dark and rainy and the wind from the east, an unfavorable combination for a movement requiring the utmost precision. On the 10th the troops from the crowded ships were landed to dry their clothes and accoutrements. Wolfe and his brigadiers now finally surveyed that line of cliffs which Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole British army. It was defended here and there by small posts. Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded. Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he decided to make his attempt.

The ships, however, kept drifting up and down between Cap Rouge and the city, with a view to maintaining the suspense of the French. Each morning Wolfe's general orders to the soldiers were to hold themselves in readiness for immediate action, with as full directions for their conduct as was compatible with the suppression of the spot at which they were to fight. On the night of the 11th the troops were reembarked, and instructions sent to Burton to post the Forty-eighth on the south shore opposite the Anse du Foulon. On the following day Wolfe published his last orders, and they contained a notable sentence: "A vigorous blow struck by the army at this juncture may determine the fate of Canada." Almost at the same moment his gallant opponent from his head-quarters at Beauport was writing to Bourlamaque at Montreal that he gave the enemy a month or less to stay, but that he himself had no rest night or day, and had not had his boots or clothes off for a fortnight. Another Frenchman was informing his friends that what they knew of that "impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior, Monsieur Wolfe," gave them reason to suppose he would not leave them without another attack.

A suspicious calm brooded over the British squadron off Cap Rouge as Bougainville watched it from the shore throughout the whole of the 12th. The men were under orders to drop into their boats at nine, and were doubtless busy looking to their arms and accoutrements. By a preconcerted arrangement the day was spent after a very different fashion in the Basin of Quebec. Constant artillery fire and the continual movement of troops against various parts of the Beauport lines engaged the whole attention of Montcalm, who had, in fact, little notion what a number of men had gone up the river with Wolfe.

When night fell upon the ruined city and the flickering campfires of the long French lines, the tumult grew louder and the anxiety greater. The batteries of Point Levis and the guns of Saunders' ships redoubled their efforts. Amid the roar of the fierce artillery, served with an activity not surpassed during the whole siege, Montcalm, booted and spurred, with his black charger saddled at the door, awaited some night attack. The horse would be wanted yet, but for a longer ride than his master anticipated, and, as it so turned out, for his last one. Up the river at Cap Rouge all was silence, a strange contrast to the din below. The night was fine, but dark, and was some three hours old when a single light gleamed of a sudden from the Sutherland's main-mast. It was the signal for sixteen hundred men to drop quietly into their boats. A long interval of silence and suspense then followed, till at two o'clock the tide began to ebb, when a second lantern glimmered from Wolfe's ship. The boats now pushed off and drifted quietly down in long procession under the deep shadow of the high northern shore.

The ships followed at some distance with the remainder of the force under Townshend, the Forty-eighth, it will be remembered, awaiting them below. The distance to be traversed was six miles, and there were two posts on the cliffs to be passed. French provision-boats had been in the habit of stealing down in the night, and to this fact, coupled with the darkness, it seems Wolfe trusted much. He was himself in one of the leading boats, and the story of his reciting Gray's Elegy, in solemn tones while he drifted down, as he hoped, to victory and, as he believed, to death, rests on good authority.[43]

The tide was running fast, so that the rowers could ply their oars with a minimum of disturbance. From both posts upon the cliff their presence was noticed, and the challenge of a sentry rang out clear upon the silent night. On each occasion a Highland officer, who spoke French perfectly, replied that they were a provision convoy, to the satisfaction of the challengers. But the risk was undeniable, and illustrates the hazardous nature of the enterprise. Wolfe's friend, Captain Howe, brother of the popular young nobleman who fell at Ticonderoga, with a small body of picked soldiers, was to lead the ascent, and as the boats touched the narrow beach of the Anse du Foulon he and his volunteers leaped rapidly on shore. Some of the boats accidentally overran the spot, but it made little difference, as the narrow path was, in any case, found to be blocked, and the eager soldiers were forced to throw themselves upon the rough face of the cliff, which was here over two hundred feet high, but fortunately sprinkled thick with stunted bushes. Swiftly and silently Howe and his men scrambled up its steep face. No less eagerly the men behind, as boat after boat discharged its load of red-coats under Wolfe's eye on the narrow shore, followed in their precarious steps.

Day was just beginning to glimmer as the leading files leaped out onto the summit and rushed upon the handful of astonished Frenchmen before them, who fired a futile volley and fled. The shots and cries alarmed other posts at some distance off, yet near enough to fire in the direction of the landing-boats. It was too late, however; the path had now been cleared of obstacles, and the British were swarming onto the plateau. The first sixteen hundred men had been rapidly disembarked, and the boats were already dashing back for Townshend's brigade, who were approaching in the ships, and for the Forty-eighth, awaiting them on the opposite shore.

The scattered French posts along the summit were easily dispersed, while the main army at Beauport, some miles away, on the far side of the city, were as yet unconscious of danger. Bougainville and his force back at Cap Rouge were as far off and as yet no wiser. Quebec had just caught the alarm, but its weak and heterogeneous garrison had no power for combined mobility. By six o'clock Wolfe had his whole force of forty-three hundred men drawn up on the plateau, with their backs to the river and their faces to the north. Leaving the Royal Americans, five hundred forty strong, to guard the landing-place, and with a force thus reduced to under four thousand he now marched toward the city, bringing his left round at the same time in such fashion as to face the western walls, scarcely a mile distant.

As Wolfe drew up his line of battle on that historic ridge of table-land known as the Plains of Abraham, his right rested on the cliff above the river, while his left approached the then brushy slope which led down toward the St. Charles Valley. He had outmanoeuvred Montcalm; it now remained only to crush him. Of this Wolfe had not much doubt, though such confidence may seem sufficiently audacious for the leader of four thousand men, with twice that number in front of him and half as many in his rear, both forces commanded by brave and skilful generals. But Wolfe counted on quality, not on numbers, which Montcalm himself realized were of doubtful efficacy at this crucial moment.

The French general, in the mean time, had been expecting an attack all night at Beauport, and his troops had been lying on their arms. It was about six o'clock when the astounding news was brought him that the British were on the plateau behind the city. The Scotch Jacobite, the Chevalier Johnstone, who has left us an account of the affair, was with him at the time, and they leaped on their horses—he to give the alarm toward Montmorency, the general to hasten westward by Vaudreuil's quarters to the city. "This is a serious business," said Montcalm to Johnstone as he dug his spurs into his horse's flanks. Vaudreuil, who in his braggart, amateur fashion had been "crushing the English" with pen and ink and verbal eloquence this last six weeks, now collapsed, and Montcalm, who knew what a fight in the open with Wolfe meant, hastened himself to hurry forward every man that could be spared.

Fifteen hundred militia were left to guard the Beauport lines, while the bulk of the army poured in a steady stream along the road to Quebec, over the bridge of the St. Charles, some up the slopes beyond, others through the tortuous streets of the city, on to the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm, by some at the time, and by many since, has been blamed for precipitating the conflict, but surely not with justice! He had every reason to count on Bougainville and his twenty-three hundred men, who were no farther from Wolfe's rear than he himself was from the English front. The British held the entire water. Wolfe once intrenched on the plateau, the rest of his army, guns, and stores could be brought up at will, and the city defences on that side were almost worthless. Lastly, provisions with the French were woefully scarce; the lower country had been swept absolutely bare. Montcalm depended on Montreal for every mouthful of food, and Wolfe was now between him and his source of supply.

By nine o'clock Montcalm had all his men in front of the western walls of the city and was face to face with Wolfe, only half a mile separating them. His old veterans of William Henry, Oswego, and Ticonderoga were with him, the reduced regiments of Bearn, Royal Rousillon, Languedoc, La Sarre, and La Guienne, some thirteen hundred strong, with seven hundred colony regulars and a cloud of militia and Indians. Numbers of these latter had been pushed forward as skirmishers into the thickets, woods, and cornfields which fringed the battle-field, and had caused great annoyance and some loss to the British, who were lying down in their ranks, reserving their strength and their ammunition for a supreme effort. Three pieces of cannon, too, had been brought to play on them—no small trial to their steadiness; for, confident of victory, it was not to Wolfe's interest to join issue till Montcalm had enough of his men upon the ridge to give finality to such a blow. At the same time the expected approach of Bougainville in the rear had to be watched for and anticipated.

It was indeed a critical and anxious moment! The Forty-eighth regiment were stationed as a reserve of Wolfe's line, though to act as a check rather to danger from Bougainville than as a support to the front attacks in which they took no part. Part, too, of Townshend's brigade, who occupied the left of the line nearest to the wooded slopes in which the plain terminated, were drawn up en potence, or at right angles to the main column, in case of attacks from flank or rear. The Bougainville incident is, in fact, a feature of this critical struggle that has been too generally ignored, but in such a fashion that inferences might be drawn, and have been drawn, detrimental to that able officer's sagacity. Theoretically he should have burst on the rear of Wolfe's small army, as it attacked Montcalm, with more than twenty-three hundred tolerable troops.

He was but six miles off, and it was now almost as many hours since the British scaled the cliff. Pickets and a small battery or two between himself and Wolfe had been early in the morning actually engaged. The simple answer is that Bougainville remained ignorant of what was happening. Nothing but an actual messenger coming through with the news would have enlightened him, and in the confusion none came till eight o'clock. The sound of desultory firing borne faintly against the wind from the neighborhood of the city had little significance for him. It was a chronic condition of affairs, and Bougainville's business was to watch the upper river, where an attack was really expected. It was a rare piece of good-fortune for Wolfe that the confusion among the French was so great as to cause this strange omission. But then it was Wolfe's daring that had thus robbed a brave enemy of their presence of mind and created so pardonable a confusion.

The constituents of that ever-memorable line of battle which Wolfe drew up on the Plains of Abraham must of a surety not be grudged space in this account. On the right toward the cliffs of the St. Lawrence were the Twenty-eighth, the Thirty-fifth, the Forty-third, and the Louisburg Grenadiers under Monckton; in the centre, under Murray, were the Forty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, and the Seventy-eighth Highlanders; with Townshend on the left were the Fifteenth (en potence) and the Second battalion of the Sixtieth or Royal Americans—in all somewhat over three thousand men. In reserve, as already stated, was Burton with the Forty-eighth, while Howe with some light infantry occupied the woods still farther back, and the Third battalion of the Sixtieth guarded the landing-place. None of these last corps joined in the actual attack.

When Montcalm, toward ten o'clock, under a cloudy but fast-clearing sky, gave the order to advance, he had, at the lowest estimate from French sources, about thirty-five hundred men, exclusive of Indians and flanking skirmishers, who may be rated at a further fifteen hundred. The armies were but half a mile apart, and the French regulars and militia, being carefully but perhaps injudiciously blended along their whole line, went forward with loud shouts to the attack.

The British, formed in a triple line, now sprang to their feet and moved steadily forward to receive the onset of the French. Wolfe had been hit on the wrist, but hastily binding up the shattered limb with his handkerchief, he now placed himself at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers, whose temerity against the heights of Beauport, in July, he had soundly rated. He had issued strict orders that his troops were to load with two bullets, and to reserve their fire till the enemy were at close quarters. He was nobly obeyed, though the French columns came on firing wildly and rapidly at long range, the militia throwing themselves down, after their backwoods custom, to reload, to the disadvantage of the regular regiments among whom they were mixed. The British fire, in spite of considerable punishment, was admirably restrained, and when delivered it was terrible.

Knox tells us that the French received it at forty paces, that the volleys sounded like single cannon-shots, so great was the precision, and French officers subsequently declared they had never known anything like it. Whole gaps were rent in the French ranks, and in the confusion which followed the British reloaded with deliberation, poured in yet another deadly volley, and with a wild cheer rushed upon the foe. They were the pick of a picked army, and the shattered French, inured to arms in various ways though every man of them was, had not a chance. Montcalm's two thousand regulars were ill-supported by the still larger number of their comrades, who, unsurpassed behind breastworks or in forest warfare, were of little use before such an onslaught. The rush of steel, of bayonet on the right and centre, of broadsword on the left, swept everything before it and soon broke the French into a flying mob, checked here and there by brave bands of white-coated regulars, who offered a brief but futile resistance.

Wolfe, in the mean time, was eagerly pressing forward at the head of his Grenadiers, while behind him were the Twenty-eighth and the Thirty-fifth, of Lake George renown. One may not pause here to speculate on the triumph that must at such a moment have fired the bright eyes that redeemed his homely face and galvanized the sickly frame into a very Paladin of old, as sword in hand he led his charging troops. Such inevitable reflections belong rather to his own story than to that of the long war which he so signally influenced, and it was now, in the very moment of victory, as all the world well knows, that he fell.

He was hit twice in rapid succession—a ball in the groin which did not stop him, and a second through the lungs, against which his high courage fought in vain. He was seen to stagger by Lieutenant Browne of the Grenadiers and Second regiment, who rushed forward to his assistance. "Support me," exclaimed Wolfe, "lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." But the lieutenant was just too late, and the wounded hero sank to the ground; not, however, before he was also seen by Mr. Henderson, a volunteer, and almost immediately afterward by an officer of artillery, Colonel Williamson, and a private soldier whose name has not been preserved. The accurate Knox himself was not far off, and this is the account given him by Browne that same evening, and seems worthy to hold the field against the innumerable claims that have been set up in the erratic interests of "family tradition."

These four men carried the dying general to the rear, and by his own request, being in great pain, laid him upon the ground. He refused to see a surgeon, declared it was all over with him, and sank into a state of torpor. "They run; see how they run!" cried out one of the officers. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, suddenly rousing himself. "The enemy, sir; egad, they give way everywhere." "Go, one of you, my lads," said the dying general, "with all speed to Colonel Burton, and tell him to march down to the St. Charles River and cut off the retreat of the fugitives to the bridge." He then turned on his side, and exclaiming, "God be praised, I now die in peace," sank into insensibility, and in a short time, on the ground of his victory which for all time was to influence the destinies of mankind, gave up his life contentedly at the very moment, to quote Pitt's stirring eulogy, "when his fame began."

FOOTNOTES:

[43] That of Professor Robinson, of Edinburgh University, who was present as a midshipman.



USURPATION OF CATHARINE II IN RUSSIA

A.D. 1762

W. KNOX JOHNSON

"No sovereign since Ivan the Terrible," says Rambaud, "extended the frontiers of the empire by such vast conquests" as those of Catharine II. "She gave Russia for boundaries the Niemen, the Dniester, and the Black Sea." This aggrandizement, which was her own boast, was a sufficient compensation to Russia, if not to history, for the crimes charged against Catharine both at home and elsewhere in the scenes of her political and military triumphs. Her participation in the three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) associated her name forever with the long and pathetic tragedy of that nation.

Voltaire, whose admiration for Catharine engages Johnson's attention, seems really to have regarded her as the political teacher of Europe, for, referring to her, he said, "Light now comes from the North." The woman who so enslaved men of genius and enlarged the empire which Peter the Great had already made powerful, was not herself a Russian. She was born at Stettin, Prussian Pomerania, in 1729, the daughter of Christian Augustus, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and Governor of Stettin.

Johnson gives an interesting account of her introduction to the court of the Empress (Czarina) Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great and Catharine I. His story of her marriage and sudden usurpation of the throne is a spirited picture of a dark event in her career. Above all, he furnishes a most animated and searching analysis of her character and acts, and of her relations with great personages of her day. His critical observations, happily blending with the historical review, shed a revealing light upon this famous ruler and her reign.

It is January, 1744, and the commandant of Stettin, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg, is keeping New-Year festivities at his castle of Zerbst, when suddenly couriers from Berlin, couriers from St. Petersburg, throw everyone into wild commotion. For the Czarina Elizabeth, casting about for a wife for her nephew, the young grand duke Peter of Holstein, nominated heir-presumptive to all the Russias, has accepted advice from Frederick, soon to become "the Great." She is formally desirous of a visit from the Princess of Zerbst and her daughter, Sophie Frederika, now fifteen years of age, and already noticeable for her good looks and good-sense. Not a moment is to be lost. So eastward, northward, the sleighs hurry them through the white leagues of snow, to arrive within six weeks at the Russian court, now established in Moscow; with little state or ceremony, nevertheless, for the princely house of Zerbst is poor as it is ancient. Sophie's wardrobe, she informs us herself, consists just of three, or it may be four, dresses, with twelve chemises. For here begins that singular autobiography; an unauthenticated fragment, it is true, but a self-portraiture convincing as any in literature.

At Moscow they made the best of impression; the Czarina was graciousness itself, and within eighteen months the young Princess had been received into the Greek Church as Catharine, and married to the Grand Duke, himself only seventeen years old.

But already she had learned not to expect happiness. He was, if we believe the accounts of him, senseless and boorish in the extreme. Certainly he did not pretend to the least affection for Catharine. A few days after her arrival, he had confided to her, "as his cousin," that he was "ardently in love with one of the maids-of-honor; since, however, the Empress desired it, he had resigned himself, and was willing to marry her instead!" She was forced, according to her assertion, to listen to confidences of a like nature during many years. His puerilities and eccentricities, we are told, amounted almost to madness. He was fond of drilling dogs and tin soldiers, together with his disgusted suite. But, like everyone else about the court, he lived in terror of the strong-willed, strong-drinking Czarina. His kennel must be kept a secret, and was accordingly located in his wife's bedroom. He would spend hours indoors cracking whips or emitting weird sounds on musical instruments. At night, after Madame Tchoglokoff, who was charged with the surveillance of the grand-ducal menage, had retired, under the impression that she had locked everyone up safely, he would call for lights again, like a schoolboy, and make Catharine and her attendants play with marionettes on the counterpane till one, two, three o'clock in the morning.

He had been more or less drunk, to credit his enemies, since the age of ten; and Catharine declares he had a mortal aversion to the bath, which it seems was then a Russian, not a German, observance. When ordered by the Empress to take one as penance during Lent, he replied that it was repugnant to his moral nature and unsuited to his physical constitution: nothing, he said, but the most vital considerations could induce him to risk the Empress' displeasure, but he was not prepared to die; and life was dearer to him than her majesty's approbation. Both were obstinate, and the dispute led to the most terrific outburst of rage on the part of the Czarina that Catharine had yet witnessed.

On another occasion his wife discovered him presiding over a court-martial in full regimentals, with a large rat in the centre of the room, which had just been suspended with all the formalities of a military execution. It appeared that the unfortunate beast had transgressed the laws of war; it had climbed the ramparts of a card-board fortress, and had actually eaten two pith sentries on duty at the bastions. It was to be exposed to the public view as an example during three days following! Catharine, unluckily, was so lost to the fitness of things as to betray open merriment. The Grand Duke was furious; and she had to retire, excusing herself with difficulty on account of her ignorance of military discipline. The affair sensibly aggravated the estrangement between them.

Of Elizabeth, who led an eccentric life with her own peculiar intimates, Catharine knew little; but she was the victim of an unrelenting if petty tyranny, which kept jealous watch over every word and movement, deprived her of any attendant of whom she made a friend, and dictated every minute circumstance of her life. It was like nothing so much as a dame school, even to the various tutors and governesses ordered her by the Czarina. When her father died she was allowed a week's mourning; at the end of that time the Empress sent a command to leave off; "she was a grand duchess, and her father was not a king." But Catharine was not of the stuff from which are modelled the monuments of docility. Little by little, as her character develops, she acquires a proud and lonely self-dependence. She awakens to intellectual interests; from the first, indeed, she had flung herself with ardor into the study of Russian history and language. During these early years books are her great distraction; "dixhuit annees d'ennui et de solitude," we read in a epitaph written by herself, "lui firent lire bien des livres."

After a trial in the wilderness of third-rate contemporary fiction, Voltaire stirs her intellect. And he leads her, too, spellbound by that incomparable verve and intellectual agility of his; she surrenders herself to the illusion of his brilliant assurances, dancing like some triumphant will-o'-the-wisp over the obscure deeps and perplexities of things. In a hundred ways, evil and good, she will remain the pupil of Voltaire. He has his part in her social test of philosophical speculations; he has his part also, be sure of it, in her long devotion to ideals of monarchy expressed for her in Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze.

After Voltaire and Madame de Sevigne, Montesquieu, Baronius, Tacitus, Bayle, Brantome, and the early volumes of the Encyclopaedia. But her gay, expansive nature was not capable, for long, of purely intellectual or stoic consolation. In a moral environment such as that of Elizabeth's court it was too easy for the reader of Brantome to seek elsewhere the "love" romances had spoken of, but marriage had denied her. She was remarked by all in her day for her gift of fascination. To outward observers she seemed at this time a radiant and happy presence, as Burke saw Marie Antoinette, the morning-star of a pleasure-loving society, "full of life, and splendor, and joy." She says that she never considered herself extremely beautiful, but "she was able to please, et cela etait mon fort." All contemporary testimony bears out this singular faculty of attracting others, rarest of natural gifts, but to a woman such as Catharine a very perilous one.

Not even those set to spy upon her could resist her personal magnetism. She could be beautiful or terrible, playful or majestic, at pleasure. At St. Petersburg there were few wits, and her intellectual superiority to those about her was sufficient to gain her the nickname among her husband's friends of "Madame la Ressource." Despite Peter's difficult relations with her, he would refer to her in most of his perplexities, especially when political, connected with his duchy of Holstein. "I don't understand things very well myself," he would explain to strangers, "but my wife understands everything." We observe in the Autobiography a fixed idea to "gain over" as many people as possible, to attach them to her interests; partly because of the opposition to the Czarina's circle, which gradually came to characterize the "Jeune Cour," but specially in the service of those vague, ambitious foreshadowings which from her first years in Russia had possessed her mind. Clear-sighted, with a keen sense of her husband's inadequacy to his position, warned by the implacable hostility of his mistress Elizabeth Vorontsoff and her relations, above all with a passionate thirst to realize her presentiment of greatness, she was instinctively preparing for some emergency, she knew not exactly what. As for the more precise premonitions of the memoirs, they are what would naturally appear to her after the fait accompli. Ambition, calculation looking before and after, patience in adversity, quickness to note and use the weakness of those about her, a steady indifference to unessentials, a political intelligence unhampered by the keener sensibilities—these are the master traits of the Catharine of the Autobiography.

So far, then, of these earlier years, while we have the memoirs with us. We must now pass quickly over many things. The motto of the Romanoffs might be taken from Macbeth: "The near in blood, the nearer bloody."[44] But in that sombre history there is no darker page than the conspiracy of 1762.

In January Elizabeth died and the Grand Duke ascended the throne, quietly enough, as Peter III. But the position of Catharine was worse than before. The Czar was completely under the influence of her enemies; he insulted her in public; and it seemed certain that his next step would be to divorce her, throw her into prison, and marry Elizabeth Vorontsoff. He had once already ordered her arrest, which his uncle had afterward persuaded him to retract. The very reforms with which he had begun his reign worked against him. He had made himself unpopular not only with the clergy, but with the Preobrajenski Guards, which, like the praetorians of the Roman Empire, disposed of the throne. He smoked and drank till three or five o'clock in the morning, writes the French ambassador; yet he would be up again at seven manoeuvring his troops. He would order a hundred cannon to be fired together that he might have a foretaste of war, and his eccentricities in general were intensified by absolute power. The history of the coup-d'etat is still obscure. A considerable party, however, formed round Catharine: the brothers Gregory and Alexis Orloff won over several regiments, and the princess Dashkoff gained adherents in society. Matters were precipitated by the accidental arrest of one of the conspirators; and although their plans were incoherent, the good-fortune of Catharine carried her through. At five o'clock in the morning of July 9th Alexis Orloff entered her room at Peterhoff, and told her to set out for St. Petersburg, where she was to be proclaimed immediately. She hastened there with the Orloffs. Three regiments, to whom vodka had judiciously been dispensed beforehand, took the oath of allegiance with enthusiasm; and others followed suit. Peter was thunderstruck. On the advice of Marshal Muennich he embarked for Cronstadt, where he was challenged, and demanded admittance as emperor. "Il n'y a plus d'empereur!" replied the commandant, Talitsine. He hurried back again, and after agonies of indecision finally abdicated. "He had lost his crown," as Frederick said scornfully, "like a naughty child sent to bed with a whipping."

So far the revolution had been bloodless, but its darker hour was to come. "I placed the deposed Emperor under the command of A. Orloff, with four 'chosen' officers and a detachment of 'quiet' and 'sober' men, and sent him to a distance of twenty-seven versts from St. Petersburg to a place called Ropsha, 'very retired,' but very pleasant"—so runs Catharine's account to Poniatowski. On the 15th he was dead; of "hemorrhoidal colic," said the official announcement; strangled, as Europe rightly believed, by Alexis Orloff with his own hands. It is hardly possible that this hideous murder was without Catharine's at least tacit consent. She certainly condoned the crime. There was danger in a name; and her sentiment was doubtless that of Lord Essex when the fate of Stafford hung in the balance: "Stone dead hath no fellow!" Already, where the Neva turns toward the Baltic, one wretched boy-Czar languished beneath the melancholy fortress of the Schluesselburg. Two years, and he too, after having known the bitterness of life, will be violently done to death in his turn. But Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand: "I am aware that people reproach her with some bagatelles a propos of that husband of hers; however, one really cannot intermeddle in these family squabbles!"

Such was the tragedy of Peter III. He dies, as Catharine said, unpitied: a fool, echo her friends, who perished in his folly. But history is precise and simple; truth complex and difficult. Was there no light, no touch of nobility at all in that strange chaotic temperament? No reverence in the boy who would kneel to the picture of the great Frederick? No generosity in the Czar who sacrificed victory to a sentiment; who abolished the hateful "secret chancery," torture, monopolies, and refused a statue of gold offered by St. Petersburg, "desiring rather to raise a monument in the hearts of the people"? There was something inarticulate there, surely—in the would-be musician who must shut himself up for hours to scrawk madly, passionately, on a crazy violin, and whose last request was for his confidant and instrument. "What is history," said Napoleon, "but a fiction agreed upon?" Such, nevertheless, is the form and spirit of the hapless Peter as portrayed by his enemies.

This was the Catharine of Elizabeth's court, and protagonist of that revolution which first made her known to Europe. But it was the sovereign who dazzled her contemporaries, and still lives splendidly with the "Great Czar" in the annals of Russia. That exuberant personality of hers is so eloquent, so omnipresent in the sphere of politics, that one is often the most luminous illustration of the other. There is a note you will find common to her grandiose schemes of territorial expansion, of intellectual enlightenment and domestic reform. It is the note of theatricality, of extravagance, of excess. The strangest chimeric phantasy sometimes here possesses her, hitherto prosaic enough in so many ways; and it communicates itself to men like the Orloffs, Patiomkin, Suvaroff. It is, I think, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who remarks that in Russia the shows of things are more important than reality. So rite, ceremonial, the spectacular, the symbolic, seem to have a power there greater than in any other people of civilization.

But stronger still was Catharine's overmastering desire to play to the applause of Europe. She had conceived herself as the heroine of a grandiose drama. It was her ambition to be the "Grand Monarque" of the North, and to show the Paris of Louis Quinze that the age of Olympian sovereignty was not yet past. Hence her sensitiveness to Western opinion, her assiduous court to the men of intellect, her anxiety to be admired and feared in Europe. Nowhere is this pose, this consciousness of a gallery, more evident than in the sphere of foreign policy. The great Peter had fulfilled the dream of Ivan in reaching the Baltic, and so, in her wars with the Turk, Catharine realized the aim of Peter by forcing her way to the Black Sea.