All the King’s Men, page 19
But first he had to wait for the tide to ebb sufficiently for the troops to land, and it was not until 4 p.m. that the assault boats were ordered to make their final approach. As they did so, they grounded on a sandbar, causing Wolfe to halt Townshend’s and Murray’s advance over the ford while the boats were refloated and Wolfe himself led a reconnaissance of the beach to find an alternative place to land. ‘We took one flat-bottomed boat with us to make the experiment,’ he recalled, ‘and as soon as we had found a fit part of the shore, the troops were ordered to embark, thinking it not too late for the attempt.’32
The grenadiers and Royal Americans had been ordered to form themselves into four ‘distinct bodies’, but not to attack the trenches until their supports from Monckton’s brigade had landed and Townshend’s and Murray’s troops had crossed the ford. Instead, according to Private Richard Humphrys of the 28th Foot, they at once ‘began to push up the banks, not waiting for the battalions that was crossing the fall, to come to their assistance, thinking they themselves would drive all before them’.33
One explanation for this impetuous advance is that two officers – one from the Royal Americans, one a grenadier, who had duelled the previous day – were competing to be first into the French trenches.34 Whatever the truth, the Canadian militamen took full advantage, waiting until the exhausted Britons and Americans were in range before opening fire with musketry and canister. A sergeant-major of grenadiers recalled: ‘As soon as we landed we fixed our bayonets and beat our Grenadier’s March, and so advanced on; during all this time their cannon play’d very briskly on us; but their small-arms, in their trenches, lay cool ’till they were sure of their mark; then they pour’d their small-shot like showers of hail, which caus’d our brave Grenadiers to fall very fast.’35
Wolfe explained to Pitt what happened next:
The Grenadiers were checked by the enemy’s first fire, and obliged to shelter themselves in or about the redoubt, which the French abandoned upon their approach. In this situation they continued for some time, unable to form under so hot a fire and having many gallant officers wounded, who, careless of their persons, had been solely intent upon their duty. I saw the absolute necessity of calling them off that they might form themselves behind Brigadier Monckton’s corps, which was now landed, and drawn up on the beach, in extreme good order.36
Townshend, too, had crossed the ford and was in a position to attack. But Wolfe chose to cancel the whole operation. ‘It was near night,’ he explained to Pitt, ‘and a sudden storm came on, and the tide began to make, so I thought it most advisable not to persevere in so difficult an attack, lest, in case of a repulse, the retreat of Brigadier Townshend’s corps might be hazardous and uncertain.’ Had the various setbacks not happened, he added, he felt certain that Townshend’s men would have gained the trenches, not least because the British artillery ‘had a great effect upon the enemy’s left’. As it was, they were forced to leave a number of wounded men, who were later murdered and scalped by Indians. The rest got away safely by boat and on foot, with Wolfe accompanying the troops back across the ford. In his dispatch to Pitt, Wolfe tried hard to excuse his failure: ‘The beach upon which the troops were drawn up was of deep mud, with holes, and cut by several gullies; the hill to be ascended was very steep, and not everywhere practicable; the enemy numerous in their entrenchments and their fire hot.’37
What Wolfe could not admit to Pitt was that he had launched a badly planned attack against an almost impregnable position; and one that, even had it succeeded, would have been only the first step on the long road to capturing Quebec. It had cost him almost 450 casualties. French losses, by contrast, were just 60 killed and wounded, most caused by the British bombardment. The greatest damage, however, was to Wolfe’s reputation, with his ‘enemies and rivals’ – notably Brigadier-Generals Townshend and Murray – now castigating his ‘impetuosity’.38
Determined to regain the initiative, and to separate his disaffected brigadiers, Wolfe now sent Murray and 1,200 men up the river on flat boats to destroy enemy shipping and harass the settlements on both shores. Two attempts to land were driven off, while a third succeeded in burning stores and a magazine at the village of Dechambault, 40 miles upriver of Quebec, on 19 August. But the bulk of French shipping remained beyond Murray’s reach and, as each day passed, Wolfe began to accept the possibility of failure. On 11 August, for example, he told the commander at Louisbourg that, though he was still determined to seek ‘a battle when occasion offers’, he was also considering a withdrawal to the Île-aux-Coudres, where the army could sit out the winter.39
It did not help that there had recently been a serious outbreak of dysentery, or ‘flux’, in the British camp at Montmorency. Spread by unsanitary water, the disease caused severe diarrhoea and vomiting, and could lead to death by dehydration. At Quebec the unit worst affected was the marines – possibly because they were less used to camp life than regular infantry – with 150 of its 1,000 men sick by 9 August. Wolfe had already issued orders for battalions to dig new latrines every three days, and for earth to be thrown into them daily. Now, as the camp grew dirtier and dysentery spread, he ordered all offal to be buried, tents to be floored with spruce boughs and wood from nearby houses, and the men to make every effort to keep themselves clean and swim regularly. Despite these measures, by late August the hospital on the Île-d’Orléans was full to overflowing with sick and wounded, and female camp followers were pressed into service as emergency nurses. Any who refused, or left the hospital ‘without being regularly dismissed by order of the director’, announced Wolfe, ‘shall be struck off the provision roll; and if found afterwards in any of the camps, shall be turned out immediately’.40
He was referring, of course, to ‘soldiers’ wives’, a term used in its widest sense for the small number of women – some legitimately married to redcoats, some not – who were permitted to accompany British armies in the field and were therefore included on the ration roll. There was, at this stage, no fixed quota: when, for example, drafts were ordered to America from regiments in Britain and Ireland in 1757, it was suggested to the secretary at war that it was ‘proper, and for the good of His Majesty’s Service, that five or six women for every hundred Men be permitted to Embark’. The following autumn, an expedition to the West Indies was allowed to take ten women per company, which meant a total of 540 women or one for every ten soldiers.41 This number did not include the unofficial camp followers, many of whom were prostitutes and not on the ration roll. Women accompanying Braddock’s ill-fated march to Monongahela, for example, were obliged to undergo a medical examination to prevent the spread of venereal disease. The lucky ones found a husband in the ranks and went legitimate, like the ‘Road Island whore’ who in October 1758 married a ‘Lobster Corperel’ (‘Lobster’ being a synonym for redcoat).42
Only occasionally, when a campaign was either particularly arduous or of short duration, would the local commander forbid the presence of women. This happened on both the expeditions to Lake George in 1758 and 1759, and for the gruelling pursuit of Cherokee Indians in 1761. When women were permitted, they were often caught up in the fighting. ‘An Indian shot one of ours,’ wrote a survivor of Monongahela, ‘and began to scalp her’, but she was saved by her husband, who killed the warrior. Some wives became veterans. ‘I have been a Wife 22 years,’ wrote Mrs Martha May, who had been confined for abusing her husband’s commanding officer, ‘and have traveled with my husband every place or county the company marcht too and have workt very hard ever since I was in the Army.’ She hoped to be pardoned ‘that I may go with my poor husband, one more time to carry him and my good officers water in yet hottest battle as I have done before.’43
Women were typically occupied as laundresses, charging a penny for each item. But some of the more enterprising set themselves up as sutlers (a civilian merchant who sells provisions to an army) or money-changers, and made sizeable fortunes as a result. Not that the authorities approved when the sale of rum caused widespread drunkenness, as it did during the siege of Louisbourg. ‘I wish that pernicious liquor banished from your camp,’ wrote Admiral Boscawen to General Amherst. ‘I know the women of the Highlanders, &the Royals to be notorious sutlers.’44
And while it was not unusual for women to be dragooned as nurses, as they were at Quebec, their skills were rudimentary at best, and they could do little to halt the spread of disease. So weakened were all three of Wolfe’s brigades by late August that, according to Corporal John Johnson of the 58th Foot, they had only a ‘very small’ chance of becoming ‘masters of Quebec’.45
Murray finally returned from his mission on 25 August, bringing with him the welcome news – from prisoners and captured correspondence – that General Amherst had captured Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Fort Niagara. Nevertheless there was, as yet, no firm intelligence as to whether Amherst had begun his advance upon Montreal, an operation that would, inevitably, have forced Montcalm to divide his army. None the wiser, and prostrated by nervous exhaustion (explained at the time as a ‘fever’),46 Wolfe dictated a memorandum to his brigadiers on 27 August, requesting them to ‘meet and consult for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best method to attack the enemy’. He told them he preferred to attack Montcalm’s army at Beauport, rather than the town itself, and suggested three options: the first, Wolfe’s favourite, was for a night march to Beauport via the upper ford of the Montmorency; the remaining two were variations of the original attack, and differed only in the direction of the main assault, option two preferring an advance below the falls, and option three a landing by boat.47
None of these suggestions was either original or likely to succeed, and the brigadiers said as much in their reply to Wolfe’s memorandum, written after they had met on 29 August and then consulted Admiral Saunders. ‘The natural strength of the enemy’s situation between the rivers St Charles and Montmorenci,’ they wrote, ‘now improved by all the art of their engineers, makes the defeat of their army, if attacked there, very doubtful.’ Their preference, therefore, was to ‘bring the troops to the south shore, and to carry the operations above the town’. They added:
If we can establish ourselves on the north shore … we are between [Montcalm] and his provisions, and between him and the army opposing General Amherst. If he gives us battle and we defeat him, Quebec, and probably all Canada, will be our own, which is beyond any advantage we can expect from the Beauport side; and should the enemy pass over the river St Charles with force sufficient to oppose this operation, we may still, with more ease and probability of success, execute the General’s third proposition (which is, in our opinion, the most eligible).48
In an attached ‘Plan of Operations’, the brigadiers suggested moving the bulk of the army to a point above the Etchemin River, opposite Saint-Michel, from where it could effect a night landing anywhere within a 12-mile stretch of the north shore from the ‘heights of St John’ to the Cap-Rouge River. The army would land in two waves – 2,000 to 2,500 men in the first, a further 1,500 in the second – so that a total of 4,000 men could get ashore in a single tide with the enemy none the wiser.49
Wolfe was surprised and disappointed by this summary rejection of his favoured plan. Yet he was still not well enough to lead it in person and felt, as he told Saunders, that it was ‘of too desperate a nature to order others to execute’.50 So he gave in to the brigadiers’ recommendation to land above Quebec – an option that he had earlier preferred – but covered himself by leaving Pitt in no doubt that it was their idea and not his. ‘They are all of opinion,’ he wrote in his final dispatch of 2 September, ‘that, as more ships and provisions are now got above the town, they should try, by conveying a corps of four or five thousand men, which is nearly the whole strength of the army, after the Points of Levi and Orleans are left in a proper state of defense, to draw the enemy from their present situation, and bring them to an action. I have acquiesced in their proposal, and we are preparing to put it into execution.’51
Wolfe’s lack of confidence in the scheme is evident in the final paragraph of his dispatch: ‘In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine. The affairs of great Britain, I know, require the most vigorous measures; however, you may be assured that the small part of the campaign which remains shall be employed (as far as I am able) for the honour of His Majesty, and the interest of the nation.’52
With the die now cast, Wolfe’s first move was to evacuate the camp at Montmorency, a tricky operation completed without loss of life in the early hours of 3 September, though the French bombarded the troops as they were rowed across the river. A day later an officer and three Rangers, exhausted from their long trek from Boston, arrived at Pointe-Lévis with dispatches from Amherst. They confirmed what Wolfe already knew: that Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Niagara were all in British hands – and ended with the rousing cry: ‘Now is the time!’53 From this, Wolfe must have surmised that Amherst was bearing down on Montreal, a move that would have made his own task easier. The truth, however, was that Amherst was still at the southern end of Lake Champlain, waiting for the construction of a freshwater fleet, while his subordinate Brigadier Gage had stalled at Niagara and Oswego. Unbeknown to Wolfe, the original three-pronged offensive had been reduced to one. He was on his own – and in more ways than one. Brigadier Townshend, who had long been critical of Wolfe, wrote to his wife on 6 September: ‘General Wolf’s health is but very bad. His generalship in my poor opinion – is not a bit better, this only between us. He never consulted any of us until the latter end of August, so that we have nothing to answer for I hope as to the success of the Campaign.’54 It was hardly a ringing endorsement of either his commander or the plan that he, Townshend, had helped to formulate.
That evening, Wolfe joined his brigadiers and the bulk of the army – seven battalions – on board the warships and transports that Rear-Admiral Holmes had concentrated upriver of Quebec. They travelled up the river on the flood tide as far as the mouth of the Cap-Rouge, where, despite the presence of floating batteries and a strong breastwork, they intended to land the following evening. Once again the operation was cancelled at the last minute, chiefly because the turning tide had prevented the naval frigates from engaging the batteries and bombarding the shore. Two days later – 9 September – a new landing was planned at a point between Cap-Rouge and Pointe-aux-Trembles, near Saint-Augustin. But it, too, was called off – this time because of heavy rain. Had it gone ahead, and been successful, Townshend and his fellow brigadiers would have won the plaudits for capturing Quebec, while Wolfe would have been remembered not as the great might-have-been, but as just another talented battalion commander who had been promoted beyond his abilities.
11. The Heights of Abraham
In the afternoon of 9 September 1759, following the cancellation of the Saint-Augustin operation, Wolfe made yet another reconnaissance of the shore above Quebec. As he passed the Anse-au-Foulon, the narrow cove that he and Holland had identified as a possible landing place in early July, he decided that now was the time to activate the plan of ‘last resort’. Next day he returned to the cove with his senior officers: Admiral Holmes, Brigadiers Monckton and Townshend, and Major Mackellar, his chief engineer. Mackellar noted that the ‘bank’, or cliff, above the cove was so steep and wooded that the French had left only around a hundred men and some barricades to guard the narrow path up from the beach; and yet, 200 yards to the right, ‘there appeared to be a slope in the bank’ that looked scalable and would provide an alternative route on to the heights. ‘These circumstances,’ wrote Mackellar, ‘and the distance of the place from succours seemed to promise a fair chance of success.’1
Wolfe was further influenced by intelligence he received from French deserters on 10 September that part of Montcalm’s army had left to reinforce Montreal. The news was, in fact, a month old; but Wolfe did not know this and, in consequence, was doubly resolved to assist what he could only assume was Amherst’s continued advance. Few of Wolfe’s senior officers were supportive. According to Admiral Holmes, ‘the alteration of the Plan of Operations was not, I believe, approved of by many, beside himself’. Holmes himself felt it should have been executed two months earlier, when the place was unguarded, and not revived at a time when it was ‘highly improbable he should succeed’.2
Wolfe, however, had recovered his self-confidence and would brook no dissent. His plan, he told Colonel Burton (his original choice as third brigadier), was to sail the troops upriver on the 11th, ‘as if intending to land above upon the north shore’, before returning to Foulon a day later under the cover of darkness and disembarking at 4 a.m. on the 13th.3 The night of 12/13 September was chosen because an ebb current, and the position of the moon, would give him the best chance of taking troops downriver and landing them undetected before daylight.
Detailed instructions were issued on the 11th. The first wave of 1,700 men, commanded by Monckton and Murray, would embark at 9 p.m. on the 12th, ‘or when it is pretty near high water’, and would be carried by the thirty flat-bottomed boats, each containing fifty men, as well as The Terror of France schooner and five longboats and cutters. The soldiers were to take nothing with them but their arms, seventy rounds of ammunition and two days’ rations. As they would be in open boats for some time, they were to be issued with an extra gill of rum that they could mix with water in their canteens to make ‘grog’.4 Silence was imperative and on no account were the men to fire from the boats. They would be spearheaded by 400 of the elite light infantry, under Colonel Howe, with the rest following according to regimental seniority. Once the first wave was on shore, the boats would return to the fleet to collect the remaining 1,900 troops and artillerymen, under Brigadier Townshend. Finally, the two battalions that had been left to guard the Île-d’Orléans and Pointe-Lévis would be rowed across from the opposite bank.
