The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

The constituents of that ever-memorable line of battle which Wolfe drew up on the Plains of Abraham must of a surety not be grudged space in this account. On the right toward the cliffs of the St. Lawrence were the Twenty-eighth, the Thirty-fifth, the Forty-third, and the Louisburg Grenadiers under Monckton; in the centre, under Murray, were the Forty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, and the Seventy-eighth Highlanders; with Townshend on the left were the Fifteenth (en potence) and the Second battalion of the Sixtieth or Royal Americans—in all somewhat over three thousand men. In reserve, as already stated, was Burton with the Forty-eighth, while Howe with some light infantry occupied the woods still farther back, and the Third battalion of the Sixtieth guarded the landing-place. None of these last corps joined in the actual attack.

When Montcalm, toward ten o'clock, under a cloudy but fast-clearing sky, gave the order to advance, he had, at the lowest estimate from French sources, about thirty-five hundred men, exclusive of Indians and flanking skirmishers, who may be rated at a further fifteen hundred. The armies were but half a mile apart, and the French regulars and militia, being carefully but perhaps injudiciously blended along their whole line, went forward with loud shouts to the attack.

The British, formed in a triple line, now sprang to their feet and moved steadily forward to receive the onset of the French. Wolfe had been hit on the wrist, but hastily binding up the shattered limb with his handkerchief, he now placed himself at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers, whose temerity against the heights of Beauport, in July, he had soundly rated. He had issued strict orders that his troops were to load with two bullets, and to reserve their fire till the enemy were at close quarters. He was nobly obeyed, though the French columns came on firing wildly and rapidly at long range, the militia throwing themselves down, after their backwoods custom, to reload, to the disadvantage of the regular regiments among whom they were mixed. The British fire, in spite of considerable punishment, was admirably restrained, and when delivered it was terrible.

Knox tells us that the French received it at forty paces, that the volleys sounded like single cannon-shots, so great was the precision, and French officers subsequently declared they had never known anything like it. Whole gaps were rent in the French ranks, and in the confusion which followed the British reloaded with deliberation, poured in yet another deadly volley, and with a wild cheer rushed upon the foe. They were the pick of a picked army, and the shattered French, inured to arms in various ways though every man of them was, had not a chance. Montcalm's two thousand regulars were ill-supported by the still larger number of their comrades, who, unsurpassed behind breastworks or in forest warfare, were of little use before such an onslaught. The rush of steel, of bayonet on the right and centre, of broadsword on the left, swept everything before it and soon broke the French into a flying mob, checked here and there by brave bands of white-coated regulars, who offered a brief but futile resistance.

Wolfe, in the mean time, was eagerly pressing forward at the head of his Grenadiers, while behind him were the Twenty-eighth and the Thirty-fifth, of Lake George renown. One may not pause here to speculate on the triumph that must at such a moment have fired the bright eyes that redeemed his homely face and galvanized the sickly frame into a very Paladin of old, as sword in hand he led his charging troops. Such inevitable reflections belong rather to his own story than to that of the long war which he so signally influenced, and it was now, in the very moment of victory, as all the world well knows, that he fell.

He was hit twice in rapid succession—a ball in the groin which did not stop him, and a second through the lungs, against which his high courage fought in vain. He was seen to stagger by Lieutenant Browne of the Grenadiers and Second regiment, who rushed forward to his assistance. "Support me," exclaimed Wolfe, "lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." But the lieutenant was just too late, and the wounded hero sank to the ground; not, however, before he was also seen by Mr. Henderson, a volunteer, and almost immediately afterward by an officer of artillery, Colonel Williamson, and a private soldier whose name has not been preserved. The accurate Knox himself was not far off, and this is the account given him by Browne that same evening, and seems worthy to hold the field against the innumerable claims that have been set up in the erratic interests of "family tradition."