CHAPTER X.

DUR

THE CLASH OF ARMS

URING the early hours of the 13th of September, 1759, the Plains of Abraham were sprinkled with light showers of rain, ere they were moistened with the blood of the heroic sons of England and of France. Towards ten o'clock the hovering clouds had passed away giving place to a flood of warm sunshine which illumined the gorgeous crimson, purple and yellow foliage of the neighbouring woodlands, and of the more distant heights of Levis on the one side, and of Lorette, Charlesbourg and Beauport on the other. It was reflected from the glittering steel of two armies drawn up in battle array, and facing each other with hostile intent.

It has already been seen that the French army was too much cramped by the nature of the ground near the city, and the shrubbery which occupied so much of it, to be able to form its columns into line of battle until they reached the more open space, extending towards the British line. from the Buttes-à-Neveu. The new disposition of the troops was made under most trying circumstances, for as soon as they appeared upon the crest of the ridge, in full view of the enemy, Captain York, whose field gun was in

advance of the British right, and almost as near to the French army as the present line of De Salaberry Street, brought it to bear with such telling effect upon Montcalm's forces, while they were in course of formation, that they were thrown into the utmost confusion. Montcalm had foreseen the difficulty of reforming his troops in face of the enemy, but there was no help for it. Had he continued his advance in solid column, he might have seriously threatened the British front,-although this had an excellent reserve in Webb's Regiment,-but the enemy's line was such an extended one, that he must have been fatally flanked, and not only caught between two fires, but actually surrounded by them. There was only one thing for him. to do, now that the Council of War had decided upon an immediate attack, and that he immediately did. He laid out his plans to divert the attention of the enemy from the main body of his army to his artillery and irregular troops. As soon as he reached the ridge over which he had to pass to find the necessary space for drawing up his men in battle array, Montcalm saw that some of the Canadians were already exchanging shots from the copse or brushwood between the two armies just in rear of the present Franciscan Church. He therefore reinforced them with some of the best marksmen from the troops of the colony, others of whom he had advanced some time before into the cornfield to the left of this copse, and on the other side of the St. Louis Road, which has already been described. The British had also sent forward some small firing parties, under cover of the inequalities of the ground, and there was quite a large amount of this desultory firing