Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire. Dan Snow
‘all persons who could be of no service in the siege, such as ladies and others, were desired to withdraw from the city; this request being considered by most people as an order, was submitted to, but not without reluctance’.71 In fact, many ignored it; there were certainly women left in Quebec right through the summer. Those who remained helped the soldiers and militiamen as they carried out Montcalm’s orders. Two fully armed ships were scuttled in the mouth of the St Charles River to act as forts and block the entrance. A wooden boom was also run across the mouth, attached with chains to either side, to prevent raids by small boats. The two sides of the river were connected by a bridge of boats with either end protected by an earthwork. Beyond them on the Beauport shore work continued ‘to line the crested bank from the River St Charles to the Falls of Montmorency with entrenchments’.72 Every few hundred metres, a redoubt was built containing three or four cannon each, with infantry positions dug in alongside and behind. In all just under forty cannon swept the coastline. In the city itself new batteries were constructed along the waterfront of the Lower Town. These guns, numbering over a hundred in all, would have the absolutely vital task of stopping the British ships getting through the narrows of the St Lawrence and upriver or ‘beyond’ the town. Once there they could cause havoc with Quebec’s communications with the rest of the colony and potentially land troops on the all-important north shore. It was imperative that the British fleet was kept below the town. Just as the Beauport entrenchments covered the French position to the east, the cannon of the town would stop the British opening a front to the west. A French officer noted in his journal that ‘batteries were erected on the Quay du Palais, and those on the ramparts, and in the lower town, were repaired, completed, and considerably enlarged’.73 Four shore batteries called ‘Royal’, ‘King’s’, ‘Queen’s’, and ‘Dauphin’s’ (the heir to the French throne) were all either built or augmented. As a result, although some defences were built further upriver, in places like L’Anse des Mères and Sillery, ‘that quarter was deemed inaccessible’. Houses that backed onto the water had their walls strengthened. Passageways from the Lower to the Upper Town were barricaded. The Scottish Jacobite, Chevalier Johnstone, was given this job; ‘I was employed for three weeks upon it with miners and other workmen, to render all the footpaths impracticable.’74 His work made a direct assault on the Lower Town with a view to storming the Upper a very difficult prospect. Cannon were mounted in small boats designed to harass any ships who ventured into the basin of Quebec. Innovative new ideas jostled for funding. Panet describes ‘two boats, armed with four 24 pound cannon’, which he says were called tracassiers, literally ‘harassers’.75 Monsieur Duclos, captain of the frigate Chézine which had brought Bougainville back from France, ‘proposed the construction of a floating battery’. It was agreed to and he was given command. Known as La Diable, ‘The She-Devil’, she was described as a ‘pontoon of a hexagonal figure; capable of bearing 12 guns of large calibre’. Six ‘gunboats each carrying a 24 pounder’ were built and each placed under the command of one of the captains of the merchant ships recently arrived in Quebec. Finally, eight small boats were each given an eight-pound gun. All these boats were able to operate in the shallow water off Beauport and would serve ‘the purpose of preventing the landing of the English’. An officer records that these boats would ‘send bark canoes ahead, which patrolling throughout the night, would be able to give notice of the slightest movement on the part of the enemy’.76
Councils of war were held and radical ideas debated. One was to destroy the Lower Town to allow clear fields of fire if the British tried to assault it directly. A diarist says that this plan was dismissed because Quebec was ‘in fact nothing if the Lower Town was destroyed’.77 Montcalm did knock down the odd warehouse to improve fields of fire for his cannon and deny any assaulting force cover as they tried to land but he was against wholesale destruction. ‘If the success of the colony could be assured by the destruction of the houses, we should not hesitate,’ he wrote to his artillery commander, Le Chevalier le Mercier, ‘however there is no point destroying houses and ruining poor people without good cause.’78
The Plan of Operations for the army stated that the ‘general disposition’ of the troops was to ‘oppose a landing between St Charles River and Montmorency falls, as well as for retirement behind this river in case the landings were effected’. Troops were spread out along the north shore of the St Lawrence. They were supported by the Native Americans although one diarist points out that ‘the savages were dispersed according to their own inclinations, it being found impossible to reduce them to any state of subordination or discipline’. Montcalm ordered his force to ‘entrench itself along its whole front for protection against cannon fire, and work will be set about to fortify the places which appear to offer the readiest facilities for landing’. In the city itself he left 800 militiamen, just over a hundred colonial regulars, and all the seamen who had come over with the fleet, perhaps seven hundred men. They manned the all-important artillery batteries which would shut off the upper river.79
If the British did try to bludgeon their way ashore, ‘no precise directions can be given for such a time. Everything will depend on the circumstances and the manner in which the enemy attacks. The army leaders must apply themselves to use every means to repel the enemy, and not to expose themselves to a total defeat by failing to secure a path for retreat.’ If withdrawal became necessary, cannon which were too heavy to drag away in a hurry should be ‘spiked’, rendered useless by driving a nail through the touch-hole on top of the barrel, so that the British could not use French cannon against them. If the French retreated across the St Charles then that line must be held at all costs; once it was crossed then the weaknesses of Quebec’s western fortifications would be exposed. In fact, if the British crossed the St Charles, Montcalm signalled his intention to abandon Quebec, rather than endure a siege. If Quebec was abandoned, the orders warned, ‘the colony is in extremis’. However, the tone of the orders was upbeat, and the commanders assured the troops that ‘in the situation in which we are, it is the only position we can take. It is both audacious and military.’80
As for the town, the command of the garrison in the Upper Town was given to de Ramezay, the King’s Lieutenant, and the Lower Town had a subordinate commander because Ramezay ‘could not be everywhere at once’. One French officer said there were ‘in all about 2000’ men in the garrison of the town, ‘composed of the Burghers and seamen’. But he claimed that they were ‘relieved every four days from the camp’. It is possible that Montcalm tried to keep his troops alert by rotating them through various positions.81
For those who were worried about the British braving the cannon fire and pushing through the narrows to probe above the town, the Plan gave contained reassurance. The combination of the town’s batteries and the French frigates above the town was being counted on to hold back the British: ‘there is no reason to believe that the enemy is thinking of attempting to pass in front of the town and landing at L’Anse des Mères, and so long as the frigates are active, we have at least nothing to fear on that side’.82
In this febrile fortnight Montcalm made several decisions that would have a momentous impact on the defence of Quebec and Canada. While he strengthened the fortifications he also planned for defeat. Canada clung to the banks of the St Lawrence. At many places the colony merely stretched inland the length of one farm. Nearly every settlement had river frontage and all the major towns were sited along the river. A gap of 110 miles separated Quebec from the next principal town, Trois Rivières, and Montreal was almost exactly the same distance further upriver. As a result the contingency for defeat was obvious: to withdraw along the St Lawrence. A journal recorded that ‘it was doubtful what might be the issue