Chapter III: Part 3

Poularies came back to his lodgings at Beauport about two in the afternoon, and he brought me the agreeable news of having converted the project of a capitulation into a retreat to Jacques-Cartier, there to wait the arrival of M. de Levis; and they despatched a courier immediately to Montreal to inform him of our misfortune at Quebec, which, to all appearance, would not have happened to us if M. de Vaudreuil had not sent him away, through some political reason, to command there, without troops except those who were with M. de Bourlamarque at L'Isle aux Noix--an officer of great knowledge. The departure of the army was agreed upon to be at night, and all the regiments were ordered to their respective encampments until further orders. The decision for a retreat was to be kept a great secret, and not even communicated to the officers. I passed the afternoon with Poularies, hoping each moment to receive from Montreuil--Major-General of the army--the order of the retreat for the regiment Royal Roussillon; but having no word of it at eight o'clock in the evening, and it being a dark night, Poularies sent his Adjutant to M. de Vaudreuil to receive his orders for the left. Poularies instantly returned to inform him that the right of our army was gone away with M. de Vaudreuil without his having given any orders concerning the retreat, and that they followed the highway to the hornwork. Castaigné, his Adjutant, could give no further account of this famous retreat, only that all the troops on our right were marched off. It can be easily imagined how much we were confounded by this ignorant and stupid conduct, which can scarce appear credible to the most ignorant military man.

Poularies sent immediately to inform the post next to his regiment of the retreat, with orders to acquaint all the left of it, from post to post, between Beauport and the Sault de Montmorency.

I then set out with him and his regiment, following those before us as the other posts to our left followed us, without any other guides, orders or instructions with regard to the roads we should take, or where we should go to; this was left to chance, or at least was a secret which M. de Vaudreuil kept to himself _in petto_. It was a march entirely in the Indian manner; not a retreat, but a horrid, abominable flight, a thousand times worse than that in the morning upon the heights of Abraham, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to destroy and cut all our army to pieces. Except the regiment Royal Roussillon, which Poularies, always a rigid and severe disciplinarian, kept together in order, there were not to be seen thirty soldiers together of any other regiment. They were all mixed, scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army was at their heels. There never was a more favourable position to make a beautiful, well-combined retreat, in bright day, and in sight of the English Army looking at us, without having the smallest reason to fear anything within their power to oppose it, as I had obtained a perfect knowledge of the _locale_ from Beauport to the Sault de Montmorency during some months that I was there constantly with M. de Levis and M. de Montcalm. I thought myself in a position to foretell to Poularies the probable order of retreat, and the route which would be assigned to each regiment for their march to the Lorette village. I was greatly deceived, and indeed could never have foreseen the route which our entire army followed to reach Lorette, and which prolonged our march prodigiously for the centre of our army, and still more for our left at the Sault de Montmorency. There is a highway in a straight line from the Sault de Montmorency to Lorette, which makes a side of a triangle formed by another highway from the Sault to Quebec, and by another road from Lorette to the hornwork, which formed the base. In the highway from the Sault to the hornwork there are eight or nine cross roads of communication from it to the road from the Sault to Lorette, which are shorter as they approach to the point of the angle at the Sault. Thus it was natural to believe that our army, being encamped all along the road from the Sault to the hornwork, each regiment would have taken one of these cross roads, the nearest to his encampment, in order to take the straight road from the Sault to Lorette, instead of coming to the hornwork to take there the road from Quebec to Lorette, by which the left had double the distance to march, besides being more liable by approaching the hornwork so near to the English, to make them discover the retreat.

The army, by this operation, would have arrived all at the same time in the road from the Sault to Lorette by the difference in the length of these cross roads, and would have naturally formed a column all along that road; and as it was not a forced retreat, they had the time from twelve at noon until eight at night to send off all the baggage by cross roads to Lorette, without the English perceiving it; but supposing them even fully aware of our design, which might have been executed in open day, they no way could disturb our operations without attacking the hornwork, and attempting the passage of the river St. Charles--a very difficult and dangerous affair--where they might be easily repulsed, exposing themselves in a moment to lose the fruits of their victory, without enjoying it; and consequently they would have been insane had they ventured on such a rash enterprise. Instead of these wise measures, which common sense alone might have dictated, tents, artillery, the military stores, baggage, and all other effects, were left as a present to the English; the officers saved only a few shirts, or what they could carry in their pockets: the rest was lost. In fact, it would appear, by this strange conduct, that a class of men there, from interested views, were furiously bent on giving up the colony to the English, so soon as they could have a plausible pretext to colour their designs,--by lopping off gradually all the means possible to defend it any longer. M. de Vaudreuil had still other kind offices in reserve for the English. He wrote to de Ramsay, King's Lieutenant and Commander in Quebec,[T] as soon as the retreat was decided:--"That he might propose a capitulation for the town eight-and-forty hours after the departure of our army from our camp at Beauport, upon the best conditions he could obtain from the English." We ran along in flight all night; and at daybreak M. de Bougainville, with his detachment, joined us near Cap Rouge. In the evening, our army arrived at Pointe-aux-Trembles--five leagues from Quebec--where it passed the night, and next day came to Jacques-Cartier. The English had so little suspicion of our retreat, seeing our tents standing without any change at our camp, that Belcour--an officer of La Rochebaucourt's cavalry--having returned to it with a detachment, two days after our flight, he found everything the same as when we left it. He went into the hornwork with his detachment, and fired the guns (pointed) at the heights of Abraham towards the English camp, which greatly alarmed them.

FINIS.

[The remainder of the manuscript alludes more particularly to the campaign conducted by Chevalier de Levis, which ended, in 1760, by the capitulation of Montreal.]

ADDENDA.

_Extract of the Register of Marriages, Baptisms and Deaths of the
French Cathedral at Quebec, for 1759_:--

"L'an mil sept cens cinquante-neuf, le quatorzième du mois de
Septembre, a été inhumé dans l'Eglise des Religieuses Ursulines
de Québec, haut et puissant Seigneur Louis Joseph Marquis de
Montcalm, Lieutenant Général des armées du Roy, Commandeur de
l'ordre Royal et militaire de St. Louis, Commandant en chef des
troupes de terre en l'Amérique Septentrionale, décédé le même
jour de ses blessures au combat de la veille, muni des sacrements
qu'il a reçus avec beaucoup de piété et de Religion. Etoient
présents à son inhumation MM. Resche, Cugnet et Collet, chanoines
de la Cathédrale, M. de Ramezay, Commandant de la Place, et tout
le corps des officiers.

(Signé,)
"RESCHE, Ptre. Chan.
"COLLET, Chne."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Les Ecossais en France, Vol. II., P. 449.

[B] Formerly, inward bound ships, instead of taking the south channel lower down than Goose Island, struck over from Cape Tourmente, and took the south channel between Madame Island and Pointe Argentenay.

[C] General Abercrombie's army consisted of 6,000 regular troops and 7,000 provincials, according to the English; but the French gave them out to be 6,300 troops, and 13,000 provincials--in all 19,300 men.

[D] The French say the English lost between four and five thousand men.

[E] Unfortunately, the plans here alluded to do not accompany the manuscript.

[F] This contest is generally denominated the Battle of the Monongahela. Capt. Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu commanded the Canadians, and achieved a most brilliant victory over General Braddock and George Washington; the English losing their provisions, baggage, fifteen cannon, many small arms, the military chest, Braddock's papers. Washington, after the battle, wrote: "We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of French."--(J. M. L.)

[G] De Vergor's post apparently stood about a 100 yards to the east of the spot on which Wolfe's Field-cottage has since been built. The ruins still exist.--(J. M. L.)

[H] De Vergor's guard was composed chiefly of Militiamen from Lorette, who on that day had obtained leave to go and work on their farms, provided they also worked on a farm Captain De Vergor owned.--"_Mémoires sur les Affaires de la Colonie de 1749-60._" Some historians have intimated that De Vergor--a _protége_ of Bigot's--was a traitor to his King.--(J. M. L.)

[I] I incline more to General Wolfe's opinion than what Voltaire reports in the war of 1781, to have been the King of Prussia's maxim:--"That we ought always to do what the enemy is afraid of." Where the enemy is afraid of anything in particular, he has there his largest force, and is there more on his guard than anywhere else.--(MANUSCRIPT NOTE.)

[J] Bigot's coterie.--(J. M. L.)

[K] It was reported in Canada, that the ball which killed that great, good and honest man, was not fired by an English musket. But I never credited this.

[L] Arnoux gave me this account of his last moments.--MANUSCRIPT NOTES.

[M] The place where Montcalm died appears yet shrouded in doubt. It is stated, in Knox's Journal, that, on being wounded, Montcalm was conveyed to the General Hospital, towards which the French squadrons in retreat had to pass to regain, over the bridge of boats, their camp at Beauport. The General Hospital was also the head-quarters of the wounded--both English and French. It has been supposed that Arnoux's house, where Montcalm was conveyed, stood in St. Louis street. No where does it appear that Montcalm was conveyed to his own residence on the ramparts (on which now stands the residence of R. H. Wurtele, Esquire). As the city surrendered five days after the great battle, it was likely to be bombarded--and, moreover, one-third of the houses in it had been burnt and destroyed--we do not see why the wounded General should have been conveyed from the battle-field to the Château St. Louis--certainly an exposed situation in the event of a new bombardment; and, moreover, the city itself, after and during the battle, was considered so insecure that the French army, instead of retreating to it for shelter, hurried past the General Hospital, over the bridge, to their camp at Beauport. There is a passage in Lieutenant-Colonel Beatson's Notes on the Plains of Abraham, which we give:--"The valiant Frenchman (Montcalm), regardless of pain, relaxed not his efforts to rally his broken battalions in their hurried retreat towards the city until he was shot through the loins, when within a few hundred yards of St. Louis Gate.[N] And so invincible was his fortitude that not even the severity of this mortal stroke could abate his gallant spirit or alter his intrepid bearing. Supported by two grenadiers--one at each side of his horse--he re-entered the city; and in reply to some women who, on seeing blood flow from his wounds as he rode down St. Louis street, on his way to the Château, exclaimed: _Oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le Marquis est tuê!!!_ he courteously assured them that he was not seriously hurt, and begged of them not to distress themselves on his account.--_Ce n'est rien! ce n'est rien! Ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies._"[O]

[N] M. GARNEAU, in his _Histoire du Canada_, says:--"The two Brigadier-Generals, M. de Semezergues and the Baron de St. Ours, fell mortally wounded; and MONTCALM (who had already received two wounds), while exerting himself to the utmost to rally his troops and preserve order in the retreat, was also mortally wounded in the loins by a musket-ball. He was at that moment between _Les Buttes-a-Neveu_ and St. Louis Gate." From the city, on the one side, and from the battle-field, on the other, the ground rises until the two slopes meet and form a ridge; the summit of which was formerly occupied by a windmill belonging to a man named _Neveu_ or _Nepveu_. About midway between this ridge and St. Louis Gate, and to the southward of the St. Louis Road, are some slight eminences, still known by the older French residents as _Les Buttes-a-Nepveu_ or _Neveu's hillocks_, and about three-quarters of a mile distant from the spot where the British line charged.--R. S. BEATSON.

[O] For these particulars I am indebted to my friend Mr. G. B. Faribault--a gentleman well known in Canada for his researches into the history of the Colony; whose information on this subject was derived from his much respected fellow-citizen the Hon. John Malcolm Frazer--grandson of one of WOLFE'S officers, and now (1854) one of the oldest inhabitants of Quebec; where, in his childhood and youth, he had the facts, as above narrated, often described to him by an elderly woman who, when about eighteen years of age, was an eye-witness of the scene.--R. S. BEATSON.

[P] This bakehouse appears to have been some where at the foot of Abraham's hill.

[Q] The excavations of these French works are very visible to this day behind Mr. G. H. Parke's residence, Ringfield, Charlesbourg road. The hornwork appears to have covered about twelve acres of ground, surrounded by a ditch.

[R] It crossed the St. Charles a little higher up than the Marine Hospital, at the foot of Crown street.--(J. M. L.)

[S] A small bridge supported on masonry has since been built at this spot, exactly across the main road at Brown's mills.--(J. M. L.)

[T] The deliberations of the council of war, called at M. Daine's, Mayor of Quebec, on the 15th September, 1759, published in de Ramsay's Memoires, in 1861, by the Literary and Historical Society, have done an effective, though a tardy, justice to de Ramsay's memory.--(J. M. L.)

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Text contains apparent parenthesized references to a map, but this book contained no maps, diagrams, or illustrations.

Page 3: "heartily" was misprinted as "heartly".

Page 3: "buried there magnificently" was misprinted as "their".

Page 8: "without trembling." should be punctuated with a question mark.

Page 28: "analize" was printed that way.

Page 30: "radient" was printed that way.

Page 30: "LaRochebeaucourt" is printed as "La Rochebaucourt" on page 59.

Page 50: Footnote M has two footnotes of its own (N and O). In this eBook, they've been resequenced as normal footnotes.

Page 59: "La Rochebaucourt" is printed as "La Rochebeaucourt" on page 30.