Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire. Dan Snow

Though of a most wild and uncultivated aspect, save where a few straggling French settlements appear. We could now upon this fine river view the whole fleet in three separate Divisions.’ Smaller schooners and sloops dashed between the larger ships carrying messages and personnel, desperately trying to maintain the cohesion of the fleet. This new land had plenty to amuse the soldiers packed on board; Montresor reports a ‘great number of white whales and many seals’. Knox recalls seeing ‘an immense number of sea-cows rolling about our ships…which are as white as snow’. He estimated that their exposed backs were twelve to fifteen feet in length and when he and his men fired muskets at them, the balls bounced off. All the journals make numerous references to collisions and groundings that were becoming more frequent as the channel narrowed. On 21 June a transport struck a shoal and fired three guns, to be towed off. Townshend tells of near disaster when five of the largest warships were ‘nearly running on board each other, the current being strong’ and ‘few would answer the helm at first’. The Diana was ‘ungovernable for a long while’ and there was very nearly a collision with the Royal William and the Orford. Just as the situation reached the ‘critical’ point, ‘a breeze sprung up which…saved us from that shock which but a few moments before seemed inevitable. Had the least fog prevailed or had it been a little later, nothing could have prevented disaster.’¹⁰¹

      At 0200 hours on 23 June the Stirling Castle, one of Durell’s squadron which had pushed up the river and now waited for Saunders and the main body of the fleet, anchored off the Île aux Coudres, heard the noise of cannon downriver. As dawn broke her log records that she ‘saw a fleet to the east’ sailing with the wind up the St Lawrence. The captain ordered his ship cleared for action and the shrill noise of the bosun’s whistle sent the watch below tumbling out of their hammocks and ‘to their quarters’.¹⁰² A flurry of signalling ensued and it was soon established that this was Saunders’ fleet. Gradually all the ships caught up and anchored in a protected bay on the north coast. The island was bleak; the 400-feet-high cliffs on its north side presented a defiant aspect to the ships as they sailed under them.

      Quebec was about fifty miles ahead. But between the fleet and the French stronghold lay by far the most dangerous stretch of river. A passage through ‘the Narrows’ separated Île aux Coudres from the north shore and beyond that the St Lawrence was scattered with low lying islands and reefs just below the surface. A number of channels led through this natural barrier but they were ever-changing because of silting. The ebb tide tore down the river and in certain wind conditions could create steep, short waves that could swamp open boats and even small ships. They were a fearsome physical barrier. To make matters worse as the British fleet approached the heart of Canada, French intervention grew ever more likely. There was every possibility that the defenders of Quebec would take up positions to augment the natural barricades with ships, men and cannon. So far the enemy had hardly shown himself; the odd crack of a musket from the trees along the shoreline had been a fine gesture of defiance but held little menace. However, after years of desperate battles against the French and their Canadian colonists, no one in Wolfe’s army doubted that they would fight to the last extremity to protect their land from invasion. The all-too-visible progress of the fleet ensured that they would have plenty of notice of the British advance and although, as Knox commented, they saw no Canadians, they did see ‘large signal fires everywhere before us’.¹⁰³ The French knew they were coming.

       TWO

       ‘The enemy are out to destroy everything that calls itself Canada’

      AT DUSK ON 22 MAY 1759 the keel of a small boat crunched into the sand and mud of the beach and a group of Frenchmen clambered over the sailors, who had shipped their oars, and jumped over the bows. They had made the 150-mile trip from Montreal in just thirty-six hours. With great urgency the group walked into the so-called Basse Ville or Lower Town. They passed a battery of ten cannon, huddled behind a three-feet-thick stone wall with wide embrasures lined with less brittle red brick, and into the chaotic huddle of buildings, clustered at the base of the cliff and penned in by the sweep of the river. On every side of them were the houses of prosperous merchants squeezed in among the storehouses that held their fortunes and numerous taverns that dotted the unpaved roadsides. The houses were all brick built, and nearly all were three storeys or more. Every one of them was coated in whitewashed mortar to protect the brick and give them a veneer of respectability. All had imposing, tall, sloping roofs to keep the winter snow from crushing them. Their windows were large but tightly latticed; made up of many small panes of glass that were easier to ship from France than large squares. Not an inch of land was wasted; the only real open space was the marketplace that dated back almost to the foundation of the city. There was a bust of Louis XIV in the middle and at its southern end a fine church: Notre Dame des Victoires, ‘Our Lady of Victories’, built and named to celebrate earlier failed attempts by the hereditary Anglo-American enemy to seize the town.

      After just 100 paces the Lower Town ended abruptly at an almost vertical face of rock with only two real roads winding up it, besides a couple of paths that were almost too steep for carts. At the top of the slope, more than two hundred feet high, two principal batteries of fifty cannon and ten squat mortars perched on the edge, their mouths threatening the St Lawrence River. Up here, in the Haute Ville or Upper Town, the aspect of the buildings changed. The very wealthiest inhabitants had built magnificent homes, almost palaces, designed to the latest French architectural styles but with substantial adaptations to allow their inhabitants to survive one of the most extreme climates in the world. For months every winter Canada froze. The arterial St Lawrence, link to the outside world, was sheathed in ice. Temperatures plunged to minus thirty degrees. Generations of Canadians had feared the climate more than the English. In early summer, however, the horrors of winter could be forgotten. Formal gardens abounded in the Upper Town, giving it a fragrant, spacious, genteel ambience. Without the pressure for space of the Lower Town the houses were lower to the ground, usually only one or two storeys high. As the group of men ascended the steep road they passed the Bishop’s palace on the right, perched on the cliff; straight ahead was the cathedral and to their left the Château St Louis, the Governor’s palace. Cannon, Catholicism and Command: the pillars on which French power in North America rested. From the magnificence of the buildings, the dress and manners of the people in the street, visitors could have been in one of the finest towns in France. In fact, they were in Quebec, stronghold of empire, capital of the vast territories of New France.¹

      Quebec was the nucleus of Canadian life. It had been the very first seed of settlement planted in the barren turf of Canada and it had flourished. It was Canada’s political, religious, educational, and social centre, its link to the outside world, the depository for the wealth of an empire. It occupied the best natural defensive position in North America and it was the continent’s most powerful fortress. One of Canada’s greatest governors, Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, wrote to Colbert in France in 1672 that ‘nothing has seemed to me so beautiful and magnificent as the site of the city of Quebec, it cannot be better situated, and is destined to one day become the capital of a great empire’.² That prophecy had certainly come true.

      Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm-Gozon, Seigneur of Saint-Véran, Candiac, Tournemine, Vestric and Saint-Julien-d’Arpaon, Baron de Gabriac, Lieutenant General in the army of Louis XV, and commander in chief of French forces in Canada, had arrived in Quebec. He was short, stocky, and energetic. Within minutes of the group installing themselves in Montcalm’s accommodation on the north of Upper Town overlooking the St Charles River, messages, requests, and orders started pouring out. An already febrile city was stirred up to new heights. Since 10 May the ships that had evaded Durell had been arriving from France. They represented salvation. The vast cereal producing areas of modern Canada were not settled in the eighteenth century. The land of the populated valley of the St Lawrence was far from ideal for growing wheat, and while enough