was, kept his men in their strong posts, and left Wolfe to seek an avenue to attack him. At last, on the 31st of July, Wolfe assailed Montcalm in his entrenchments. Leaving Brigadier Townshend to ford the Montmorenci and attack in flank, Wolfe, with the help of the ships and their boats, threw himself on the beach, and attacked in front. The Centurion man-of-war was so placed as to check the fire of a French battery, which commanded the ford of the Montmorenci; and two transports drawing little water were furnished with guns, and sent close in shore to cover the spot which Wolfe had selected for his landing; but these two vessels, light as they were, could not get near enough to be of much use, a number of boats crowded with soldiers grounded upon a ledge of rocks, time was lost in getting them off, and Wolfe was obliged to send an officer to stop Townshend, who was already crossing the ford. The French, meanwhile, had united their artillery on the point menaced-a rising ground beyond the river bankand, galled by their fire, the English grenadiers, so soon as they were landed, rushed tumultuously up to the formidable entrenchments, without waiting for the corps which were to sustain them and join in the attack. In fact, Townshend, though steadily upon his march, and perfectly in order, was still at some distance; and Brigadier Monckton had not got his men out of the boats. The grenadiers were met in the teeth by a fire too terrible for the bravest of them, and they fell back in confusion after sustaining a serious loss. Still further deterred by the approach of night, and the ominous roaring of the St. Lawrence-for the mighty tide was now ebbing, and a storm was setting in-Wolfe gave up his attack and withdrew his brave men. "The French," he says, "did not attempt to interrupt us; but some of their savages came down to murder such wounded as could not be brought off, and to scalp the dead, as their custom is." Wolfe's situation now seemed almost desperate, and his health began to fail him. In a letter to Pitt, written from his head-quarters at Montmorenci, more than a month after this failure, he confessed that he had descended to the dubiousness and despondency of consulting a council of "I found myself so ill," said he, "and am still so weak, that I begged the general officers to consult together war. for the public utility. To the uncommon strength of this country, the enemy have added, for the defence of the river, a great number of floating batteries and boats. By the vigilance of these and the Indians round our posts, it has been impossible to execute anything by surprise. We have almost the whole force of Canada to oppose. In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine. The affairs of Great Britain require the most vigorous measures; but then the courage of a handful of brave men should be exerted only where there is some hope of a favourable event." When this letter reached England, it excited feelings of disappointment, consternation, and anger. Pitt feared that he had been mistaken in his favourite young general, and that the next intelligence would be, either that he had been destroyed or had capitulated. But in concluding his melancholy epistle, Wolfe had said that he would do his best; and that best turned out a miracle in war. He declared that he would rather die than be brought to a court-martial for miscarrying; and in conjunction with Admiral Saunders he concerted a plan for scaling the heights of Abraham, and gaining possession of the elevated plateau at the back of Quebec, on th side where the fortifications were the weakest, as the French engineers had there trusted to the precipices and the broad river beneath. In order to deceive the enemy, the admiral sailed some three or four leagues higher up the river, lay there as if intent on other business, and then, on the night of the 12th of September, glided down the river and put out all his boats to land the troops under the heights of Abraham. Through the darkness of the night, and the skill and caution of the seamen, the French outposts and sentinels were all passed without alarm given, and the English soldiers were landed at the appointed spot by boatfulls at a time. The first that landed were some nimble Highlanders, who climbed the steep face of the rocks like goats. The English light infantry followed the Highlanders, and were in their turn followed by the troops of the line. There was a French guard over their heads, and hearing a rustling noise, but seeing nothing, these fellows fired down the precipices at random. Our men then fired up into the air, and also at random; but, terrified at so strange and unexpected an attempt, the French picquet ran off, all but the captain, who was wounded and taken prisoner, and who begged our officers to sign a certificate of his courage and steadiness, lest he should be punished as corrupted, believing that the English general's bold enterprise would be believed impossible with out corruption and connivance. It was far more difficult to get at the French than to beat them when we were at them. But Wolfe now stood on the long-desired heights of Abraham. He had no artillery with him, and excessive fatigue and disease, the French and the wild Indians had reduced his army to less than 5,000 men. His light infantry, however, seized four guns which the French had placed in battery, and the English sailors by dint of extraordinary exertions hauled up one gun from the landing place. On the other side, Montcalm came on in too great a hurry to allow the French to wait for their artillery, and they brought up no more than two small field pieces. At first the French general could hardly credit the evidence of his senses; so impossible did it seem for an army to have ascended those dangerous cliffs. At last he said, "I see them where they ought not to be; but, since they are there, we must fight. I will go and crush them." Quitting his entrenchments, he advanced with confident haste to the field, where Wolfe had already formed his little army in order of battle, within long cannon-shot range of the out works of Quebec. After lining the bushes with detachments of Indians, the French and Canadians advanced, as if to charge, in very good order, and with great vivacity; but they opened an irregular fire before they got within musket range. The English reserved their fire until the enemy were within a few yards of their front; and then they poured in a terrible discharge. This first volley was succeeded by a most steady, deliberate, and sustained fire; and, in less than half an hour the French and Canadians began to waver. As Wolfe stood conspicuous in the front line, cheering his men, a musket ball struck his wrist. He wrapped a handkerchief round the wound, continued giving his orders, and soon put himself at the head of his grenadiers, who had fixed their bayonets for the charge. He was hit by a second ball, in the upper part of the abdomen; but he seemed scarcely to heed this more serious wound, and was in the act of cheering the grenadiers, when a third musket-ball hit him and brought him to the ground. His grieved men picked him up and carried him to the rear. He was dying fast, yet he still continued intent on the battle. As his eyes were growing dim, he heard a wounded officer near him exclaim, "See how they run!" "Who run?" cried Wolfe. "The French," replied the officer; "they give way in all directions." "Then," said the hero, "I die content!"-and after giving an order for Webb's regiment to move down to Charles's river and secure the bridge there, in order to cut off the enemy's retreat, he calmly expired on the ground among his officers and faithful soldiers. "The pitying fates his death delay, Till Heaven for him declares the day- General Monckton, the second in command, was dangerously wounded, but Townshend nobly and speedily completed the victory. General Montcalm received a mortal wound in attempting to rally the discomfited French, and his second in command was made prisoner and so badly wounded, that he died on the following day. We do not remember another instance where each of two contending armies lost in one battle its chief and its second in command. The city of Quebec capitulated five days after the action, and the disheartened remnant of the French army of Canada retired to Montreal, where they could not maintain themselves. In effect the project of Pitt was realized, and one battle gave us the dominion of that immense country. One dispatch conveyed to England intelligence of the unexpected victory on the heights of Abraham, of the death of Wolfe, and of the surrender of Quebec. The national triumph was saddened by grief for the loss of the truly national hero. He was only thirty-three years of age, but, young as he was when he fell, Wolfe had lived long enough to achieve glory and an immortal military fame. It is needless to bestow a word of eulogium on his gallant little army, which behaved as British soldiers always have done, and ever will do, if properly commanded. A. D. 1760-1300. It is not consistent with our plan and object to go into the unhappy war with our own colonists and descendants in North America, or to revive jealousies and disputes which ought to be forgotten by nations speaking the same language, having the same religion and literature, and being, in every essential, so nearly akin to each other. Though badly, and, in some cases, infamously commanded by incompetent or careless and rash generals, the British infantry lost no reputation in those arduous campaigns. In all the latter part of that war the Royalist forces were in a great measure made up of Hessians and other German mercenaries, who had no heart in the cause and who fought merely for their pay. It had been a disgrace to the Anglo Saxon blood, or to their own English descent, if the Americans, on their own ground, had not beaten troops like those. But during this unnatural conflict neither France nor any of the many powers that took part against us, had reason to congratulate themselves on their success either by land or by sea. French, Spanish, and Dutch were all beaten in their turns as our fleets came up with theirs; and if Port Mahon and the island of Minorca were lost, Gibraltar was defended, and retained by a mere handful of soldiers in spite of the enormous efforts made by France and Spain to take it. But that affair belongs to the history of sieges. And while we were losing an empire in the west, the genius of WARREN HASTINGS was building us up a new empire in the east. Following up the great conceptions of Clive, Hastings, unaided by the home government, left almost alone to his own resources, shattered every hostile confederacy that was formed against us in India, rebuked the pride of the French who were again disputing our supremacy, and either conquered, or established our influ |