The Battle of Quebec

Quebec was the prize the whole war had been circling toward, a city on a rock that Montcalm would not come out to defend. Through a long hot summer Wolfe bombarded it, burned the countryside around it, and failed bloodily at Montmorency, and got no nearer the rock.

If Montcalm would not come down, the British would get above him. On a feint and the tide and the dark, Wolfe put his army up a cliff at the Anse au Foulon and onto the open ground at the city’s gate, exactly where Montcalm had sworn it could never be.

Montcalm chose to attack at once. The British line held its fire, let the French come to thirty-five yards, and broke them with two crashing volleys. It was over in fifteen minutes, and the militia and Native allies on the flanks are much of why anything of the French army got away.

Both generals died of the battle. The city surrendered five days later, and with no relief coming, the colony followed. A French rematch the next spring almost took it back, until the river decided it again, the way it had decided everything at Quebec.