Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (91 page)

I have read and collated with extreme care all the above authorities, with others which need not be mentioned.

Among several manuscript maps and plans showing the operations of the siege may be mentioned one entitled,
Plan of the Town and Basin of Quebec and Part of the Adjacent Country, shewing the principal Encampments and Works of the British Army commanded by Major Gen
^l
.
Wolfe, and those of the French Army by Lieut. Gen
^l
.
the Marquis of Montcalm
. It is the work of three engineers of Wolfe’s army, and is on a scale of eight hundred feet to an inch. A fac-simile from the original in possession of the Royal Engineers is before me.

Among the “King’s Maps,” British Museum (CXIX. 27), is a very large colored plan of operations at Quebec in 1759, 1760, superbly executed in minute detail.

J.

XXVIII. FALL OF QUEBEC

Death and Burial of Montcalm
.—Johnstone, who had every means of knowing the facts, says that Montcalm was carried after his wound to the house of the surgeon Arnoux. Yet it is not quite certain that he died there. According to Knox, his death took place at the General Hospital; according to the modern author of the
Ursulines de Québec,
at the Château St.-Louis. But the General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary danger of capture by the English; while the Château had been made untenable by the batteries of Point Levi, being immediately exposed to their fire. Neither of these places was one to which the dying general was likely to be removed, and it is probable that he was suffered to die in peace at the house of the surgeon.

It has been said that the story of the burial of Montcalm in a grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only on the assertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville. There is, however, other evidence of the fact. The naval captain Foligny, writing on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under date of September 14: “A huit heures du soir, dans l’église des Ursulines, fut enterré dans une fosse faite sous la chaire
par le travail de la Bombe,
M. le Marquis de Montcalm, décédé du matin à 4 heures après avoir reçu tous les Sacrements. Jamais Général n’avoit été plus aimé de sa troupe et plus universellement regretté. Il étoit d’un esprit supérieur, doux, gracieux, affable, familier à tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance de toute la Colonie:
requiescat in pace
.”

The author of
Les Ursulines de Québec
says: “Un des projectiles ayant fait une large ouverture dans le plancher de bas, on en profita pour creuser la fosse du général.”

The
Boston Post Boy and Advertiser,
in its issue of Dec. 3, 1759, contains a letter from “an officer of distinction” at Quebec to Messrs. Green and Russell, proprietors of the newspaper. This letter contains the following words: “He [
Montcalm
] died the next day; and, with a little Improvement, one of our 13-inch Shell-Holes served him for a Grave.”

The particulars of his burial are from the
Acte Mortuaire du Marquis de Montcalm
in the registers of the Church of Notre Dame de Québec, and from that valuable chronicle,
Les Ursulines de Québec,
composed by the Superior of the convent. A nun of the sisterhood, Mère Aimable Dubé de Saint-Ignace, was, when a child, a witness of the scene, and preserved a vivid memory of it to the age of eighty-one.

K.

XXIX. SAINTE-FOY

Strength of the French and English at the Battle of Ste.-Foy

In the Public Record Office (
America and West Indies,
XCIX.) are preserved the tabular returns of the garrison of Quebec for 1759, 1760, sent by Murray to the War Office. They show the exact condition of each regiment, in all ranks, for every month of the autumn, winter, and spring. The return made out on the 24th of April, four days before the battle, shows that the total number of rank and file, exclusive of non-commissioned officers and drummers, was 6,808, of whom 2,612 were fit for duty in Quebec, and 654 at other places in Canada; that is, at Ste.-Foy, Old Lorette, and the other outposts. This gives a total of 3,266 rank and file fit for duty at or near Quebec; besides which there were between one hundred and two hundred artillerymen, and a company of rangers. This was Murray’s whole available force at the time. Of the rest of the 6,808 who appear in the return, 2,299 were invalids at Quebec, and 669 in New York; 538 were on service in Halifax and New York, and 36 were absent on furlough. These figures nearly answer to the condensed statement of Fraser, and confirm the various English statements of the numbers that took part in the battle; namely, 3,140 (Knox), 3,000 (John Johnson), 3,111, and elsewhere, in round numbers, 3,000 (Murray). Lévis, with natural exaggeration, says 4,000. Three or four hundred were left in Quebec to guard the walls when the rest marched out.

I have been thus particular because a Canadian writer, Garneau, says: “Murray sortit de la ville le 28 au matin à la tête de toute la garnison, dont les seules troupes de la ligne comptaient encore 7,714 combattants, non compris les officiers.” To prove this, he cites the pay-roll of the garrison; which, in fact, corresponds to the returns of the same date, if non-commissioned officers, drummers, and artillerymen are counted with the rank and file. But Garneau falls into a double error. He assumes, first, that there were no men on the sick list; and secondly, that there were none absent from Quebec; when in reality, as the returns show, considerably more than half were in one or the other of these categories. The pay-rolls were made out at the headquarters of each corps, and always included the entire number of men enlisted in it, whether sick or well, present or absent. On the same fallacious premises Garneau affirms that Wolfe, at the battle on the Plains of Abraham, had eight thousand soldiers, or a little less than double his actual force.

Having stated, as above, that Murray marched out of Quebec with at least 7,714 effective troops, Garneau, not very consistently, goes on to say that he advanced against Lévis with six thousand or seven thousand men; and he adds that the two armies were about equal, because Lévis had left some detachments behind to guard his boats and artillery. The number of the French, after they had all reached the field, was, in truth, about seven thousand; at the beginning of the fight it seems not to have exceeded five thousand. The
Relation de la seconde Bataille de Québec
says: “Notre petite armée consistoit
au moment de l’action
en 3,000 hommes de troupes reglées et 2,000 Canadiens ou sauvages.” A large number of Canadians came up from Sillery while the affair went on; and as the whole French army, except the detachments mentioned by Garneau, had passed the night at no greater distance from the field than Ste.-Foy and Sillery, the last man must have reached it before the firing was half over.

T
HE
M
ODERN
L
IBRARY
E
DITORIAL
B
OARD

Maya Angelou

·

Daniel J. Boorstin

·

A. S. Byatt

·

Caleb Carr

·

Christopher Cerf

·

Ron Chernow

·

Shelby Foote

·

Stephen Jay Gould

·

Vartan Gregorian

·

Charles Johnson

·

Jon Krakauer

·

Edmund Morris

·

Elaine Pagels

·

John Richardson

·

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

·

Carolyn See

·

William Styron

·

Gore Vidal

1999 Modern Library
Edition Biographical note copyright © 1999 by Random House, Inc.
Series Introduction copyright © 1999 by Caleb Carr
Introduction copyright © 1999 by John Keegan All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Modern Library and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Parkman, Francis, 1823-1893.
Montcalm and Wolfe/Francis Parkman.—1999 Modern Library
ed.
p. cm.
1. United States—History—French and Indian War, 1775-1763—
Campaigns. 2. Montcalm de Saint-Véran, Louis-Joseph, marquis de,
1712-1759. 3. Wolfe, James, 1727-1759. I. Title.
E199.P255 1999
973.2'6—dc21 98-48972

Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com eISBN: 978-0-67964173-5