Historical Placing of the Event To study an event in history aright, one has to place it in proper relationship with the collateral events in the world's history; otherwise, as is the case in many of the pages of our colonial histories, events may be thrown out of proportion. As has been claimed, the capture of Quebec in 1759 was a world's event, the direct outcome of the momentous struggle for supremacy among the nations of Europe during the Seven Years' War. That war has been briefly referred to in a note in a previous part of this volume, in which only a few of the more prominent actors in that struggle could have a place-a note intended as an incentive to the reader to place the Siege of Quebec in right relationship with the other events of these early times. The story of Britain's rivalry with France, during the middle of the eighteenth century, finds its complementary counterpart in the story of the rivalries between the French and English colonies in North America; and the latter story can hardly be properly understood without a grasping of the more prominent details of the former. The record of both stories in parallel lines has, perhaps, yet to be drawn up, with a converging point in the event which forms the subject of this volume. Meantime, no one will be inclined to deny that there is ample justification for |