Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire. Dan Snow
ovens, all the way up from Quebec to Trois Rivières; and to establish storehouses, and small magazines in different places, for securing a retreat’. Troops were also ‘ordered to retain the smallest quantity of baggage possible and to send the rest away into the interior’. Despite Montcalm’s insistence that Canada was lost if Quebec fell, he was clearly preparing for continued resistance should Wolfe capture the town, in accordance with the instructions from the French court to keep hold of a scrap of territory no matter how small. One decision in particular was to have a major impact on the campaign. He decided that ships carrying much of the essential supplies for the colony would be moved just over fifty miles upriver from Quebec to Batiscan. This was above the Richelieu rapids, which only very shallow-draught ships could negotiate and only at certain times. Here the ships and stores would be safe from Saunders. It also meant that if Quebec fell, the colony’s entire supply of food and powder would not fall with it and there was hope for further resistance. Montcalm’s army would be supplied by a regular flow of food and stores that would come in small boats down the St Lawrence from Batiscan to Quebec. It was a long supply line and therefore vulnerable. The danger was that in planning for the aftermath of the fall of Quebec he risked weakening his position and thus hastening that eventuality. His plan for the defence of Quebec now relied on the assumption that he could stop the British from passing the narrows and operating above the town, where they would be able to intercept his supplies.83
Having waited in vain for the mighty river to swallow up the British fleet, the French resorted to that other traditional instrument of salvation, the raid and ambush. On 30 May, as so often before in the bloody history of Canada, a party of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred Canadians and Native Americans ‘was sent…to the coast of the Ile aux Coudres to skirmish with the English who had landed there, and to lay in ambush for them under cover of the woods, with which the island was almost wholly overgrown’. A French army officer, with a scorn of their Native allies typical of his class, said that on seeing the British the Native Americans refused to continue ‘and the expedition had to be abandoned’. But it seems that a small group of Canadians insisted on pressing on and lay in wait on the island. Three young British naval officers blundered into the trap and triggered the first contact of the 1759 campaign. It was a quick and easy Canadian success. The war party ‘killed the horses which they rode, without hurting the riders who they brought away’. The three men were midshipmen, the most junior naval officers, and they had been ‘placed as sentinels to make signals when they described any vessels to the southward’. They were brought back to Quebec. Another journal recorded that they were as young as 14. No less than three sources agree that, remarkably, one of the teenagers was a relative of Rear Admiral Durell, probably a grandson. According to Panet they ‘were treated honourably’ during their time in Quebec where they spoke freely about the British fleet, somewhat exaggerating its size, and of the British expectation that Quebec would fall without too much resistance. Indeed, Panet thought they sounded like ‘they considered this operation already accomplished’. After just over a week they were sent further inland to Trois Rivières, to keep them out of mischief but not before they had ‘praised the skill of the Canadians for having killed their horses without having harmed them’.
Despite the unorthodox methods of the Canadians and Native Americans they proved on this first foray that they had huge potential as irregular troops, in this instance gaining the first real intelligence about the British fleet. Our scornful French officer refused to be impressed. In his journal he pointed out that the midshipmen told their captors that another 600 men were unarmed and milling about on the beach. He regretted this missed opportunity, writing that they could all have been ‘destroyed’ by the ‘smallest detachment’.84
Even so, it was no doubt a morale-boosting success. By the beginning of June a cautious optimism had replaced the panic occasioned by the fiery beacons. A journal recounted that ‘by the end of the month [May] the palisades were fixed, the batteries completed, and Quebec secured against a coup de main’.85 The number of men present for the defence of the city was far greater than people had dared hope for. The walls of the city and the north bank of the St Lawrence bristled with cannon. Supplies of food and powder were sufficient, if not plentiful. In fact, there was an odd feeling of anticlimax. The whole population had believed that the British would land within days of their appearance at Bic. They had thrown themselves into the task of protecting the city but as June plodded on there was no sign of the British and ‘the delay…gave leisure for that ardour to cool’. After all, the Canadians were ‘by nature impatient’.86
Their desire to meet the enemy stemmed from a conviction that they would beat any British force. Importantly, people believed that Quebec would hold out. The history of Canada, from Cartier’s first pathetic attempts to survive the winter, was one of struggle against the climate, the Native Americans, and invasions by land and sea. Time and again grave threats to the colony had been overcome. Quebecers believed that their town was impregnable and had been protected by the Virgin Mary herself against pagans and heretics for hundreds of years.
One myth fast being demolished, however, was that of the impassable St Lawrence. While Montcalm’s men dug, built, and sweated under the increasingly warm early summer sun it seemed to them that the north-east wind blew with depressing regularity. This is not entirely corroborated by the more objective logs of the British ships but the British were certainly blessed with fairly benign conditions. The news that the British ships had arrived at the Île aux Coudres ‘renewed the consternation, for no doubt was now entertained, that the whole English fleet was closely following’. It was particularly embarrassing for the French sailors: ‘our seamen, who had always represented the navigation of the river to be extremely difficult (which indeed the very frequent accidents that befell our ships, gave every reason to believe was true) had cause to blush at seeing the English ships accomplish it, without incurring any loss or danger’.87 Voices in the colony had for some time demanded manmade defences for suitable points on the river. Despite everyone blaming each other it seems the main reason for these not being put into action was simply the vast cost and considerable logistical effort in building forts and batteries on inaccessible headlands and islands. The French were not totally downcast, however. They knew that the toughest stretch of navigation in the whole river still lay ahead of the British. Although the river was still around fourteen miles wide at the Île aux Coudres, the navigable channel was narrow and ran tight along the north shore, between Coudres and the awesome Cap Tourmente, thirty miles away, with its steep, heavily wooded sides. From here the passage crossed diagonally to the south between rocks, sand spits, and reefs. The ebb tide tears through the passage at up to six knots, even with a light contrary wind it will kick up such steep waves that small boats can be swamped and lost. It was uncharted, had never been passed by a large ship and the French had removed all the navigation marks. It was the final and most formidable navigational hurdle before the fleet reached Quebec. It was known simply as ‘the Traverse’.
Mastering the St Lawrence
FOR DAYS THE SMALL BOATS bobbed around on anchor or crept forward under oar and sail whenever wind and tide permitted. During the halts the sailors leant on their blades, readying themselves for the next burst of activity. In the stern the master took frequent soundings, noted down the results, and used compass and landmarks to fix their position. The current ebbed and flowed under them at a giddy speed of up to six knots. Only men who had crept cautiously around Alderney in the Channel Islands or knew the Bristol Channel would have seen anything like it before. Frequent squalls soaked the crews and the red-coated soldiers and marines tried to wrap the breeches of their muskets in rags to keep their powder dry. Every day they edged slightly further along the channel close to the north shore, but when they ventured too close puffs of smoke would billow out from the treeline accompanied by the sharp crack of a musket. Each attack would provoke a pointless game of cat and mouse