下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
THEeventful night of the twelfth was clear and calm, with no light but that of the stars. Within two hours before daybreak thirty boats, crowded with sixteen hundred soldiers, cast off from the vessels and floated downward in perfect order with the current of the ebbtide. To the boundless joy of the army, Wolfe’s malady had abated, and he was able to command in person. His ruined health, the gloomy prospect of the siege, and the disaster at Montmorenci, had oppressed him with the deepest melancholy, but never impaired for a moment the promptness of his decisions, or the impetuous energy of his action.
He sat in the stern of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every arrangement made, and it only remained to face the issue. The ebbing tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke the silence of the night but the gurgling of the river, and the low voice of Wolfe, as he repeated to the officers about him the stanzas of Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” which had recently appeared, and which he had just received from England. Perhaps as he uttered those strangely appropriate words: —
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with mournful prophecy across his mind. “Gentlemen,” he said, as he closed his recital, “I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow.”
As they approached the landing-place, the boats edged closer in towards the northern shore, and the woody precipices rose high on their left like a wall of undistinguished blackness.
“ Qui vive? ” shouted a French sentinel from out the impervious gloom.
“ La France! ” answered a captain of Fraser’s Highlanders from the foremost boat.
As boats were frequently passing down the river with supplies for the garrison, and as a convoy from Bougainville was expected that very night, the sentinel was deceived and allowed the English to proceed. A few moments later, they were challenged again, and this time they could discern the soldier running close down to the water’s edge, as if all his suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies of the Highlander once more saved the party from discovery.
They reached the landing-place in safety, —an indentation in the shore about a league above the city and now bearing the name of Wolfe’s Cove. Here a narrow path led up the face of the heights, and a French guard was posted at the top to defend the pass. By the force of the current the foremost boats, including that which carried Wolfe himself, were borne a little below the spot. The general was one of the first on shore. He looked upward at the rugged heights which towered above him in the gloom. “You can try it,” he coolly observed to an officenear him; “but I don’t think you’ll get up.”
At the point where the Highlanders landed, one of their captains, Donald Macdonald, apparently the same whose presence of mind had just saved the enterprise from ruin, was climbing in advance of his men, when he was challenged by a sentinel. He replied in French, by declaring that he had been sent to relieve the guard, and ordering the soldier to withdraw. Before the latter was undeceived, a crowd of Highlanders were close at hand, while the steeps below were thronged with eager climbers, dragging themselves up by trees, roots, and bushes. The guard turned out and made a brief though brave resistance. In a moment they were cut to pieces, dispersed, or made prisoners, while men after men came swarming up the height and quickly formed upon the plains above. Meanwhile the vessels had dropped downward with the current and anchored opposite the landing-place. The remaining troops disembarked, and with the dawn of day, the whole were brought in safety to the shore.
The sun rose, and from the ramparts of Quebec the astonished people saw the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the dark-red lines of the English forming in array of battle. Breathless messengers had borne the evil tidings to Montcalm, and far and near his wideextended camp resounded with the rolling of alarm-drums and the din of startled preparation. He, too, had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife amonghis soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town, when on that disastrous morning the news of their successful temerity fell like a cannon-shot upon his ear. Still he assumed a tone of confidence. “They have got to the weak side of us at last,”he is reported to have said, “and we must crush them with our numbers.” With headlong haste his troops were pouring over the bridge of St. Charles, and gathering in heavy masses under the western ramparts of the town. Could numbers give assurance of success, their triumph would have been secure, for five French battalions and thearmed colonial peasantry amounted in all to more than seven thousand five hundred men. Full in sight before stretched the long, thin lines of the British forces—the Highlanders, the steady soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the provinces —less than five thousand in number, but all inured to battle, and strong in the full assurance of success.
It was nine o’clock, and the adverse armies stood motionless, each gazing on the other. The clouds hung low, and at intervals warm light showers descended besprinkling both alike. The coppice and corn-fields in front of the British troops were filled with French sharshooters, who kept up a distant spattering fire. Here and there a soldier fell in the ranks, and the gap was filled in silence.
At a little before ten the British could see that Montcalm was preparing to advance, and in a few moments all his troops appeared in rapid motion. They came on in three divisions, shouting after the manner of their nation, and firing heavily as soon as they came within range. In the British ranks not a trigger was pulled, not a soldier stirred, and their ominous composure seemed to damp the spirits of the assailants. It was not till the French were within forty yards that the fatal word was given, and the British muskets blazed forth at once in one crashing explosion. Like a ship at full career arrested with sudden ruin on a sunken rock, the ranks of Montcalm staggered, shivered, and broke before that wasting storm of lead. The smoke rolling along the field for a moment shut outthe view, but, when the white wreaths were scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions resolved into a moborder and obedience gone; and, when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic. For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoincheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, and driving the fugitives in crowds, the British troops advanced and swept the field before them. The ardour of the men burst all restraint. They broke into a run and with unsparing slaughter chased the flying multitude to the gates of Quebec. Foremost of all, the light-footed Highlanders dashed along in furious pursuit, hewing down the Frenchmen with their broadswords and slaying many in the very ditch of the fortifications. Neverwas victory more quick or more decisive.
In the short action and pursuit the French lost fifteenhundred men, killed, wounded, and taken. Of the remainder some escaped within the city, and others fled across the St. Charles to rejoin their comrades who had been left to guard the camp. The pursuers were recalled by sound of trumpet, the broken ranks were formed afresh, and the English troops withdrawn beyond reach of the cannon of Quebec. Townshend and Murray, the only general officers who remained unhurt, passed to the heaof every regiment in turn and thanked the soldiers for the bravery they had shown; yet the triumph of the victors was mingled with sadness as tidings went from rank to rank that Wolfe had fallen.
In the heat of the action, as he advanced at the head of the grenadiers of Louisburg, a bullet shattered his wrist, but he wrapped his handkerchief about the wound, and showed no sign of pain. A moment more and a ball pierced his side. Still he pressed forward waving his sword and cheering his soldiers to the attack, when a third shot lodged deep within his breast. He paused, reeled, and staggering to one side, fell to earth. Brown, a lieutenant of the grenadiers, Henderson, a volunteer, an officer of artillery, and a private soldier, raised him together in their arms, and bearing him to the rear laid him softly on the grass. They asked if he would have a surgeon, but he shook his head and answered that all was over with him. His eyes closed with the torpor of approaching death, and those around sustained his fainting form. Yet they could not withhold their gaze from the wild turmoil before them, and the charging ranks of their companions rushing through fire and smoke. “See how they run,” one of the officers exclaimed, as the French fell in confusion beforthe levelled bayonets. “Who run?” demanded Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. “The enemy, sir,” was the reply; “they give way everywhere.” “Then,” said the dying general, “tell Colonel Burton to march Webb’s regiment down to Charles River, to cut offtheir retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I shall die in peace,” he murmured; and turning on his side he calmly breathed his last.
· · · · ·
On the eighteenth of September, 1759, the rock-built citadel of Canada passed for ever from the hands of its ancient masters.
— PARKMAN: “The Conspiracy of Pontiac.”