The Campaign of 1760 in Canada | Page 2

panic amongst those who are taken
unawares, and must soon be communicated through all the quarters of

the town. The soldiers are so much the more terrified that they know
not where they are most in danger; not like during a siege, where the
place for the assault is marked by the breach. Their heads turn, and,
deprived of judgment, coolness and reflection, they think rather of
escaping the slaughter that ensues when a town is being captured in this
manner, than of defending the ramparts. But Quebec being accessible
only on that side of it which faces the heights of Abraham, and having
nothing to fear elsewhere, the moment an alarm is sounded, all the
force of the garrison must naturally be there. Thus the English having
seven thousand men in the town--almost as many as our army proposed
for the escalade to invest all that part of the town open to attack--it is
likely that we should have lost the half of our army in the attempt, and
at last, after a horrible slaughter of men, have been obliged to return
ignominiously from whence we came. Besides, supposing that we had
even taken the Lower Town by escalade, we would not have been
further advanced. The English, in half an hour afterwards, by burning it,
by throwing down from the Upper Town upon the roofs of the houses
fire pots, shells and other combustible matter, could have soon chased
us out of it, or buried us under its ruins. This project, after having
furnished for a long time matter for the daily conversations of
Montrealers, was at last considered by M. de Levis, and classed as it
deserved, amongst the vagaries of bedlam; he substituting a scheme in
its place which was reasonable, well combined, doing honor to his
ability and talent.
[Footnote A: The four or five paces of 1760 have now attained seven or
eight acres.--(L)]
M. de Levis, in giving an account to the Court of the loss of all our
artillery and stores at Quebec, gave likewise all possible assurances that
he would re-take the town in the spring and save the colony, provided
they would send to him from Europe a ship loaded with field-pieces
and ammunition, to set sail from Europe in the month of February, in
order to be in the St. Lawrence river before the arrival of the English,
and near Quebec in the month of April. He collected our army as soon
as the season permitted; got together about twelve pieces of old cannon,
which had been laid aside for many years, and with a small quantity of

gunpowder and very few bullets, he set out from Montreal with his
army towards the beginning of April, the snow being as yet upon the
ground; and he conducted his march so well that the army arrived at
Cap Rouge, three leagues from Quebec, without the enemy having any
information of their having left Montreal. He did not flatter himself to
be able to take Quebec with such a despicable train of artillery, and his
design was only to invest the town; to open the trenches before it; to
advance his approaches, and be in a position, the moment the ships he
had asked from the Court should arrive, to land the cannon, placing
them instantly upon the batteries ready to receive them, and without
loss of time to batter the town immediately.
Fortune favored him to the height of his wishes, and if the ships had
arrived with the artillery he expected from France, that town could
scarce have held out for four and twenty hours, by which means he
would have had the glory of preserving to his country the colony of
Canada, then reduced to its last gasp.
The English got the news of our army's being at Cap Rouge by a most
singular accident, which greatly manifests the predominant power of
Fortune in military operations, and shows that the greatest general
cannot guarantee success or put himself out of the reach of those events
which human understanding cannot foresee, whereby the best
combined and well-formed schemes are frustrated in their execution. In
all appearance we would have taken Quebec by surprise had it not been
for one of Fortune's caprices, that have often as much share in the
events of war as the genius and talents of the greatest generals.
The Athenians were not in the wrong to paint Timotheus asleep, whilst
Fortune, in another part of the picture, was spreading nets over towns to
take them for him.
An artillery boat having been overturned and sunk by the sheets of ice,
which the current of the St. Lawrence brought down with great force,
an artilleryman saved himself on a piece of ice that floated down the
river with