resting ten miles away, thanks to Wolfe's admirable strategy, which had tired them out with marches and countermarches, against vessels, wind and tide, which were never weary. Even without this distant corps however, Montcalm got together 4,000 to 5,000 men, put himself at their head, and rushed towards the enemy. To his disappointment, he found, not a confused mass devoid of order, but a regular force of apparently 6,000 or 7,000 men, drawn up in line of battle, with their right resting on a wood and their left sloping to the road St. Foy, sheltered from the cannon of the town, and with sappers and miners throwing up entrenchments. Montcalm saw how great were the odds against him. He paused in hopes that his missing corps would arrive: he sent message after message to the Governor, Vaudreuil, to despatch every man from the camp, which was in no danger of attack. The night had been consumed in these preliminaries, and during an hour and a half, until 10 o'clock in the morning, the two forces confronted each other; Montcalm vainly hoping for reinforcements, and Wolfe constantly bringing forward men and field-guns, whilst the entrenchments were fast rising from the ground. There was nothing for it but retreat or fighting. Probably retreat would have been wiser, for Quebec might have resisted. But Montcalm gave the order to attack. : During the long pause he had thrown out Indian and Canadian sharpshooters; now on rough ground and among brushwood on the right he placed 1,500 Canadians, and more on his left: in the centre he had five battalions of the line with sharpshooters in front of them. The little force, almost a forlorn hope, started firmly and in order but the Canadians soon deserted their post, disappearing among the brushwood: the sharpshooters in front, left unsupported, fell back into the ranks and caused confusion. Montcalm saw that all was nearly lost, and that there was the alternative of retreat, and on the other hand audacity and the strange chances of war, which have sometimes given victory to Frenchmen against tenfold odds. To Wolfe and the English, retreat was impossible down the bed of a torrent, with an enemy behind them. Of the two Heroes, which will be triumphant? Achilles, swift of foot, has led his myrmidons up the rugged path to the post of danger will Hector, issuing from his fortified walls, drive them. back headlong to their ships? or will Achilles drive Hector back and slay him under the walls? Wolfe could trust his British soldiery, and even if retreat had been possible, he was the last man to refuse a battle; and this was a battle he had been long seeking and for which his soul was eager. He ordered his men to reserve their fire till the French were close upon them, and in the meantime to put two bullets into every musket. Montcalm began to fire from a distance, with little result of course. He ordered a charge with the bayonet, a hazardous procedure for Frenchmen against British infantry, the stubbornest of men. When they got within 40 yards of the lines, they received such a hailstorm of lead from the double-shotted guns, that the right gave way and the whole line wavered. Wolfe seized the critical moment of consternation: at the head of his Grenadiers he rushed upon the Frenchman's left and drove it before him. The battle was won: Wolfe had earned immortal renown; but it was on Gray's Path of glory that leads but to the grave. Already wounded in the wrist, he received another bullet in the chest, and fell. As he lay covered with a cloak, he heard a cry "they are running away":-"who are running?" he asked:"the French." He answered, like every expiring but victorious soldier "Then I die happy." Such is the temper of the hero; such is his "ruling passion strong in death." Had he lived, the routed French could scarcely have rallied: but his second in command was unequal to the task suddenly imposed upon him. Wolfe with his dying breath, had ordered him to advance rapidly and cut off the retreating enemy; but the order was disregarded. As yet, the French General had escaped unhurt: he strove to rally his forces; covering their retreat with some of the Canadians and other fugitives whom he had rallied. The pursuit was already slackening in the absence of the dying English General, when Montcalm, close to Quebec, but still on horseback, was struck by a ball in a vital part. Less fortunate than his opponent he did not die on the field, but was carried into the Château St. Louis. He asked his surgeon how soon he might expect to die :—“in ten or twelve hours at the most ":" the sooner the better,” he rejoined ; "but at any rate, I shall not live to see the English in Quebec." Then he gave advice to his successor to spare the honour of France, and to carry the surviving soldiers that very night to join the detached corps that had been watching the English fleet. He did not know that Wolfe had fallen, and he looked upon Quebec as lost. He did know that the Ministry had abandoned him to his own resources, but he made no complaint. His countrymen say of him that he lived and died like the Chevalier Bayard, "sans peur et sans reproche." Both the little armies were now without a general. The Governor of Quebec, Vaudreuil, who had refused to assist Montcalm in the battle, and had previously crossed him in his projects, was now at his wit's end with fear, and began in company with an unworthy subordinate to prepare terms of capitulation: but the army was indignant, and terrified the Governor into abandoning his cowardly policy. But the camp was hastily broken up, and the troops marched towards Montreal. Lévis, who had been detached from Quebec by Montcalm, now took the command; but despite all his brave efforts, Quebec, Montreal, Canada itself were lost to France lost, not by military cowardice or misconduct, but by sloth and incapacity of the Government at home, where Madame de Pompadour and a weak ministry trifled with European policy, and Louis XV. was intent on clandestine schemes in favour of Poland; schemes of no ignoble kind, unknown at the time and only very lately disclosed to the world. Canada was lost to France, as were her Indian possessions in the other hemisphere; lost, never to be recovered. : Thus concludes my sketch of two distinguished soldiers; both of whom may be said, like Sidney and Nelson to have died in battle; both leaving names dear to their countrymen. I have principally relied on French versions of their history; and it is gratifying to find no French disparagement of the British hero; no slur cast upon his good faith; no depreciation of his military skill, of his ready resource, of his daring enterprise, or of his stubborn courage. It is little to us that he wanted the graces of a courtier, and that dying young, he had failed to learn that chastened reserve which is the best foil to the bright jewel of valour: it is enough that he had proved himself to have the true genius of command, and that he died performing an exploit seldom surpassed, fighting an opponent worthy of him. Montcalm, this opponent, was his superior in the lighter graces of life, and his equal in intrepidity. But he seems to have been his inferior in the qualities of a consummate general: he showed neither unfailing sagacity nor sleepless vigilance. Though warned by previous experience, he permitted the Indian massacre of the British, not through inhumanity but through negligence. He was sleeping while the Indians were slaying: he was dreaming of glory while his fair name was being tarnished. Two years later he allowed Wolfe to outmanœuvre him by the feigned attacks of his fleet. He trusted that the Heights of Abraham were inaccessible under the protection of a steep, rugged path, with a blockhouse at the top and a sentinel below. But the sentinel was befooled and secured the British scaled the ravine: the guard of the blockhouse slumbered and were surprised. A consummate general employs guards who do not slumber, and at critical moments makes assurance doubly sure by visiting his outposts. : Some of Montcalm's countrymen have blamed him for attacking Wolfe posted on the heights. If the attack had succeeded, the same critics would have praised him for his fortunate audacity. Are we to take success as the unfailing test of wisdom? Wolfe however, was crowned with success. If Montcalm could now speak, he would acknowledge the superiority of his antagonist's exploit, and might say, as Hannibal of Scipio, as Louis XIV.'s marshals of Marlborough, as Villeneuve of Nelson, as Napoleon of Wellington, "Great must I call him, for he conquered me." In fit commemoration of this illustrious battle, there has been erected in the Governor's garden at Quebec, a monument, not to Wolfe alone, nor to Montcalm alone, but to both the heroes jointly. We may apply to this memorial the lines of Scott upon the great statesmen Pitt and Fox, who after the fitful fever of long political warfare, sleep side by side at Westminster. Drop upon Fox's grave a tear, "Twill trickle to his rival's bier; 'Here let their discord with them die: |