THE BATTLE THAT CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY!
The fall of Quebec, the fortified capital of New France, to British
forces in 1759 led to the ultimate defeat of French power in North
America. The dramatic battle on the Plains of Abraham which secured
final victory for Major General James Wolfe not only set the course
for the future of Canada, it also opened the door to the independence
of the thirteen American colonies some twenty years later.
The sheer drama of the campaign and the lionization of the doomed
Wolfe, however, have diverted attention from the pertinent questions
that the military historian must ask of this famous event. When were
the critical decisions taken? Who made the plans? Why did they succeed
or fail? What sort of man was Wolfe? Was Montcalm a bad commander
or just an unlucky commander? The late C.P. Stacey, one of Canada's
foremost military historians, provides the answers to these and other
questions in a beautifully-written study on the art of generalship
that has long been regarded as the best book on the siege of Quebec.
In this major new edition, Stacey's original text appears
in its entirety. Editor Donald E. Graves has, however, included updated
source references and more than 120 period and modern illustrations
of personalites, scenes (both period and modern), events, weapons,
troops, ships including uniform art by such leading illustrators as
Eugene Leliepvre of France and G.A. Embleton of Britain. Six additional
appendices describe new information on the siege, the complete orders
of battle for the oppposing forces on land and sea, the military heritage
of the battle, the operations of the Royal Navy in 1759 -- and even
the songs sung on both sides. An expanded bibliography includes archival
sources and published works relating to the original edition but also
material on the Seven Years' War in North America, the armies and
navies of the period and the role of the aboriginal peoples.
This handsome new edition of a classic work of military history is
the most complete, attractive and authoritative book on the operation
that changed the course of world history.
An Excerpt
From Quebec, 1759
Copyright
2002 by Massey College, University of Toronto and Donald E. Graves.
Stymied
by Montcalm's fortification of the best landing place near Quebec
-- the Beauport Shore immediately east of the town -- Wolfe spent
more than a month looking for another place to attack. Finally, on
31 July 1759, he reluctantly makes a direct assault on the Beauport
area. The result is disastrous.
Courtesy, National
Archives of Canada
The 31st of July dawned clear and extremely hot; there was breeze
enough to enable the navy to act; and the operation was launched.
The Centurion moved into the channel north of the Isle of Orleans,
took up a station a little east of Montmorency Falls and began to
cannonade the two most easterly French batteries ...... The two
"cats" (armed transports) Russell and Three Sisters were duly run
ashore near the redoubt; but Cook's calculations had evidently been
at fault -- presumably he had had to reconnoitre from a distance
and they did not get as close to it as Wolfe had hoped. The General
himself, eager to be in the forefront and to get a really close
look at the enemy's positions, boarded the Russell. It was a warm
spot ...... Wolfe later wrote to Saunders (by way of convincing
him that his vessels' guns had not mastered the enemy's), "I was
no less than three times struck with the splinters in that ship
and had my stick knocked out of my hand with a cannonball."
Montmorency Falls,
courtesy, National Archives of Canada
A modern view
of Montmorency Falls – photo by Dianne Graves
...... But what he saw from the shot-swept deck of the Russell
destroyed the whole basis of his plan. The redoubt was much closer
to the French entrenchments along the heights than it had appeared
to be when viewed from the British camp, and it was clear to Wolfe
that it was not tenable under their fire. ...... What was he to
do?
Private,
58th Foot, 1759, by G.A. Embleton,
courtesy Parks Canada |
Wolfe must have been very loath to cancel
the operation; any commander would have been, in the circumstances.
The army, after the long time of waiting, was expecting a
decisive battle. What would a cancellation do to its morale?
Wolfe looked at the French entrenchments. The defenders were
in motion, and they seemed to be disorganized. This decided
him. He wrote later in his journal, "Their confusion & disorder
incline me to attack them." Orders were sent to Townshend,
commanding at Montmorency, and Monckton, commanding at Point
Lévis, "to prepare for Action".
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...... The transports had run ashore about eleven o'clock. About
12:30, it seems, the boats with the landing force put off from the
Isle of Orleans and lay in the channel, under ineffective French
artillery fire, awaiting orders to attack. The afternoon was well
advanced before they were sent in; and then they struck trouble
in the form of an offshore "ledge" or "shoal" -- both words are
Wolfe's -- on which many of them grounded. ......
The landing was suspended; an officer was sent to stop Townshend,
whose force was on the move; and Wolfe himself, on Saunders' suggestion,
went in with a naval officer in one of the fleet's flat-bottomed
boats (the contemporary equivalent of modern landing craft) to find
a suitable spot to go ashore. Much time had been lost, and it was
apparently about half-past five when the boats, under a sky now
dark and lowering, made for the place which Wolfe had selected.
The thirteen companies of grenadiers and 200 men of the Royal
Americans led the attack. It was the moment for which the army had
waited so long: the moment cheerfully foretold by Sergeant Botwood
of the grenadier company of the 47th in his doggerel verses:
When the Forty-seventh Regiment is dashing ashore,
While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar,
Says Montcalm: "Those are Shirley's, -- I know the lapels."
"You lie," says Ned Botwood, "we belong to Lascelles'!
Tho' our cloathing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff;
So at you, ye bitches, here's give you Hot Stuff.
This spirit now produced disaster. The grenadiers went up like
a skyrocket. Whether, as Captain Knox and others aver, they took
leave of the control of their officers, or whether the officers
were in some degree at fault, seems impossible to say. What appears
to be the one surviving story by a grenadier officer tells how they
got out of the boats and formed "as well as we could" in waist-deep
water; then, he says, "The General ordered the Grenadiers March
to beat, which animated our Men so much that we could scarce restrain
them." Wolfe's own angry accounts indicate that the companies, instead
of forming on the beach and waiting for Monckton's battalions to
land and Townshend's to cross the ford and support them, made a
wild dash for their enemy. ......
The French hastily decamped from the redoubt and the battery;
and from the entrenchments on the heights a withering fire came
down. According to Knox, the grenadiers now made attempts to rush
the heights; the grenadier officer is content to say that the bank
proved "inaccessable". But there is no doubt that the French fire
quickly took a heavy toll.
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At this moment, with Wolfe's plan gone
awry and affairs at a crisis, Nature took a hand. The black
sky burst suddenly in one of those violent summer storms familiar
in the Laurentic Basin; Knox calls it "the dreadfullest thunder-storm
and fall of rain that can be conceived". As the heavenly artillery
flashed and roared, the weapons of puny man fell silent; both
sides' powder was wet. According to more than one account,
the French troops were almost out of ammunition when this
happened. In other circumstances, this would have been a moment
of opportunity for the British, a chance to storm the heights
with the bayonet while the French fire was blanketed; but
the wet grassy slopes must have been beyond climbing, and
a good part of the troops present were disorganized. Moreover,
as Wolfe puts it, "the tide began to make"; and there was
danger of the retreat of Townshend's and Murray's brigades
across the ford being cut off.
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Soldier,
Troupes de la Marine, 1759, by E. Leliepvre,
courtesy Parks Canada |
The General decided to withdraw. Most of Monckton's
men and what was left of the grenadiers were taken off by the waiting
boats; and the two brigades from the Montmorency camp, which had
never formed a junction with the landing force, withdrew across
the ford in excellent order, as they had advanced. ...... Part of
Fraser's Highlanders, who had landed with Monckton, were diverted
to Montmorency, and covered the retreat across the river; Wolfe,
characteristically, marching with them.
Townshend's notes contribute a picturesque detail, which reminds
us that the 78th were really less a British regiment than a war
party of Clan Fraser. At the ford the Highland companies halted,
he says, and "would not retire with him until they knew their regiment
had reimbarked". One imagines the General and the brigadiers remonstrating
with the obdurate Scots as the tide rose, and the Frasers refusing
to cross until they were certain that their clansmen were not being
abandoned on the hostile shore. Finally they were satisfied that
the regiment was safely off, and consented to proceed. By that time
"ye tide of flood was so high that the Regiments could scarcely
wade over ye ford".
The two "cats" were damaged beyond salvaging; the crews were
taken off and the vessels burned. Wolfe recorded in his journal
a loss of 210 killed and 230 wounded ...... Ned Botwood, the bard
of the 47th, would write no more verses; he was lying dead on the
bloody Montmorency beach, with many another bold grenadier around
him.
Read what the Reviewers
said about the first edition of:
Quebec, 1759: The Siege and the Battle
For students of military history who continuously fret over the usual
lack of maps, illustrations, details about the orders of battle and
the weights of ammunition -- fear not. {Brass Studio's work provides
considerable relief from your run-of-the-mill history texts. ......
Of particular interest in this book is the attention paid to the naval
and amphibious aspects of the siege and battle. ...... Graves's introduction
does a superb job of providing the context for and a critique of Stacey's
original manuscript ...... [and] ...... among the notable improvements
over the original, this new edition has included in the appendices
an article written by Stacey in 1966 ...... which offered details
of new documentation that came to light after the publication of the
original manuscript. ...... many have used Stacey's original publication
as a battlefield guide, but it was time for an updated reference with
better illustrations and maps. Fortunately, Donald Graves and Robin
Brass Studio have delievered exactly that.
Andrew Godefroy, Canadian Military Journal,
Spring 2003
Students of the 1759 campaign, of the Seven Years' War, and , indeed,
of Canadian history generally are therefore fortunate that Donald
E. Graves and Robin Brass Studio have produced a new edition of C.P.
Stacey's 1759 classic. Although it leaves the original text intact,
this new edition introduces Staceys classic anew and sets it within
a revised and greatly expanded scholarly apparatus that adds significantly
to the utility of the work. ....... Graves writes in his introduction
that it is his hope that his work "has not damaged what is a minor
classic" as he has sought "simply [to] decant fine old wine into a
new and attractive bottle." He has succeeded in this admirably, as
one would expect of an historian of the editor's reputation.
John Houlding, Army Doctrine and Training
Bulletin, Winter 2002-2003
"The author's crisp style, military insight and abundantly fair measurements
of Wolfe and Montcalm make this a highly readable and important addition
to any book-collector's shelves."
Winnipeg Tribune
"For my money this is the most important book on Canadian military
history to have yet been written... Quebec, 1759 is a splendid,
stirring, factual account of what took place during those critical
weeks in the history of our nation. It explodes a hundred myths and
throws out the fallacies with which the campaign has been beset for
too long."
J.R. Walker, Globe and Mail
". . . in spite of the fact that many supporters of both the Wolfe
and Montcalm schools of thought are going to find their cherished
dreams about their heroes cast aside so abruptly, I am sure that the
honest ones will agree that here is the best analysis of the Siege
of Quebec that has yet appeared."
Rick Hart, CBC Assignment
"Colonel Stacey has shown, in the remarkable feat of historical reconstruction,
that new light may be shed on a celebrated historical event even when
it has been lavishly written up and, some may think, overwritten."
The Times Literary Supplement
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