Читать книгу In the Heart of Old Canada - William Charles Henry Wood - Страница 14

The secret instructions sent out from France in 1759 were the death warrant of Montcalm: La guerre est le tombeau des Montcalm "...it is indispensable to keep a foothold.... The King counts upon your zeal, courage and tenacity." Montcalm replied: "...I shall do everything to save this unhappy colony, or die." And he kept his word. He had already done splendid service in a losing cause; stemming the enemy's advance by three desperate rearguard victories in three successive years. Now he stood at bay for the last time. The country was starving. The corrupt Intendant and his myrmidons were still preying on all that was left of its resources. The army had numbers enough, and French and Canadian gallantry to spare. But the Governor added spiteful interference to the other distractions of a divided command. The mail that brought the final orders was the first for eight months; and Old France and New were completely separated by a thousand leagues of hostile sea, in whose invisible, constricting grasp Quebec had long been held.

In June Admiral Saunders led up the St. Lawrence the greatest fleet in any part of the world. Saunders was a star of the service even among the galaxy then renowned at sea. With him were the future Lord St. Vincent, the future Captain Cook, who made the first British chart of the River, and several more who rose to high distinction. His fleet comprised a quarter of the whole Royal Navy; and, with its convoy, numbered 277 sail of every kind. Splendidly navigated by twice as many seamen as Wolfe's 9000 soldiers, the fleet and convoy made the besiegers an amphibious force at Quebec, while also holding the River eastward against all comers.

Wolfe, worn out, half despairing, twice repulsed, at last saw his chance, the only one he might ever have. He knew that disease was wasting him away, and that he was about to stake his whole reputation on a most daring venture. And he must have felt the full poignancy of the now famous line, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," when he repeated Gray's Elegy to the officers in his reconnoitring boat off Sillery Point the day before the battle. But he was a profoundly apt master of the art of war; and his undauntable spirit soared with the hope of death in victory. Planning and acting entirely on his own initiative he crowned three nights and days of finely combined manœuvres, on land and water, over a front of thirty miles, by the consummate stratagem which placed the first of all two-deep thin red lines across the Plains of Abraham exactly at the favourable moment. And who that knows battle and battlefield knows of another scene and setting like this one on that 13th morning of September?

"All Nature contains no scene more fit for mighty deeds than the stupendous amphitheatre in the midst of which Wolfe was waiting to play the hero's part. For the top of the promontory made a giant stage, where his army now stood between the stronghold of New France and the whole dominion of the West. Immediately before him lay his chosen battlefield; beyond that, Quebec. To his left lay the northern theatre, gradually rising and widening, throughout all its magnificent expanse, until the far-ranging Laurentians closed in the view with their rampart-like blue semicircle of eighty miles. To his right, the southern theatre; where league upon league of undulating upland rolled outward to a still farther-off horizon, whose wider semicircle, curving in to overlap its northern counterpart, made the vast mountain-ring complete. While, east and west, across the arena where he was about to contend for the prize of half a continent, the majestic River, full-charged with the right-hand force of Britain, ebbed and flowed, through gates of empire, on its uniting course between Earth's greatest Lakes and greatest Ocean. And here, too, at these Narrows of Quebec, lay the fit meeting place of the Old World with the New. For the westward river gate led on to the labyrinthine waterways of all America, while the eastward stood more open still—flung wide to all the Seven Seas."

Meanwhile, Montcalm had done all he could against false friends and open enemies. He had repulsed Wolfe's assault at Montmorency and checkmated every move he could divine through the impenetrable screen of the British fleet. A week before the battle he had sent a regiment to guard the Heights of Abraham; and, on the very eve of it, had ordered back the same regiment to watch the path up which Wolfe came next morning. But the Governor again counter-ordered! There they are where they have no right to be!—said Montcalm, as he spurred on to reconnoitre the red wall that had so suddenly sprung up across the Plains. He had no choice but instant action. "...he rode down the front of his line of battle, stopping to say a few stirring words to each regiment as he passed. Whenever he asked the men if they were tired, they said they were never tired before a battle; and all ranks showed as much eagerness to come to close quarters as the British did themselves.... Montcalm towered aloft and alone—the last great Frenchman of the Western World...he never stood higher in all manly minds than on that fatal day. And, as he rode before his men there, his presence seemed to call them on like a drapeau vivant of France herself." He fought like a general and died like a hero.

Never were stauncher champions than those two leaders and their six brigadiers. "Let us remember how, on the victorious side, the young commander was killed in the forefront of the fight; how his successor was wounded at the head of his brigade; and how the command-in-chief passed from hand to hand, with bewildering rapidity, till each of the four British Generals had held it in turn during the space of one short half-hour; then, how the devotion of the four Generals on the other side was even more conspicuous, since every single one of these brave men laid down his life to save the day for France; and, above all, let us remember how lasting the twin renown of Wolfe and Montcalm themselves should be, when the one was so consummate in his victory, and the other so truly glorious in defeat."

The next year saw the second battle of the Plains, when Lévis marched down from Montreal, over the almost impassable spring roads, and beat back Murray within the walls, after a most desperate and bloody fight. At the propitious moment Lévis rode along his line, with his hat on the point of his sword as the signal for a general charge, in which the French-Canadians greatly distinguished themselves. He quickly invested the town and drove the siege home to the utmost. "At nine o'clock on the night of the 15th of May three men-of-war came in together. The officer commanding at Beauport immediately sent Lévis a dispatch to say the French ships had just arrived. But the messenger was stopped by Murray's outposts. Lévis himself was meanwhile preparing to advance on Quebec in force; when a prisoner, who had just been taken, told him these vessels were the vanguard of the British fleet!" Of course, he raised the siege at once. But he retired unconquered; and Vauquelin covered his line of retreat by water as gallantly as he had made his own advance by land. Thus France left Quebec with all the honours of war.