Montcalm and Wolfe Part 56

One is printed in the _New York Mercury_ for December, 1759; the other was found among the papers of George Alsopp, secretary to Sir Guy Carleton, who served under Wolfe (Quebec Historical Society). Johnstone, _A Dialogue in Hades_ (Ibid.). The Scotch Jacobite, Chevalier Johnstone, as aide-de-camp to Levis, and afterwards to Montcalm, had great opportunities of acquiring information during the campaign; and the results, though produced in the fanciful form of a dialogue between the ghosts of Wolfe and Montcalm, are of substantial historical value. The _Dialogue_ is followed by a plain personal narrative. Fraser, _Journal of the Siege of Quebec_ (Ibid.). Fraser was an officer in the Seventy-eighth Highlanders.

_Journal of the Siege of Quebec, by a Gentleman in an Eminent Station on the Spot, Dublin, 1759_. _Journal of the Particular Transactions during the Siege of Quebec_ (_Notes and Queries_, XX.). The writer was a soldier or noncommissioned officer serving in the light infantry.

_Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec and Total Reduction of Canada, by John Johnson, Clerk and Quarter-master Sergeant to the Fifty-eighth Regiment_. A ma.n.u.script of 176 pages, written when Johnson was a pensioner at Chelsea (England). The handwriting is exceedingly neat and clear; and the style, though often grandiloquent, is creditable to a writer in his station. This curious production was found among the papers of Thomas McDonough, Esq., formerly British Consul at Boston, and is in possession of his grandson, my relative, George Francis Parkman, Esq., who, by inquiries at the Chelsea Hospital, learned that Johnson was still living in 1802.

I have read and collated with extreme care all the above authorities, with others which need not be mentioned.

Among several ma.n.u.script maps and plans showing the operations of the siege may be mentioned one ent.i.tled, _Plan of the Town and Basin of Quebec and Part of the Adjacent Country, shewing the princ.i.p.al Encampments and Works of the British Army commanded by Major Gen'l. Wolfe, and those of the French Army by Lieut. Gen'l. the Marquis of Montcalm_. It is the work of three engineers of Wolfe's army, and is on a scale of eight hundred feet to an inch. A facsimile from the original in possession of the Royal Engineers is before me.

Among the "King's Maps," British Museum (CXIX. 27), is a very large colored plan of operations at Quebec in 1759, 1760, superbly executed in minute detail.

Appendix J

Chapter 28. Fall of Quebec

_Death and Burial of Montcalm_.--Johnstone, who had every means of knowing the facts, says that Montcalm was carried after his wound to the house of the surgeon Arnoux. Yet it is not quite certain that he died there. According to Knox, his death took place at the General Hospital; according to the modern author of the _Ursulines de Quebec_, at the Chateau St.-Louis. But the General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary danger of capture by the English; while the Chateau had been made untenable by the batteries of Point Levi, being immediately exposed to their fire. Neither of these places was one to which the dying general was likely to be removed, and it is probable that he was suffered to die in peace at the house of the surgeon.

It has been said that the story of the burial of Montcalm in a grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only on the a.s.sertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville. There is, however, other evidence of the fact. The naval captain Foligny, writing on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under the date of September 14: "A huit heures du soir, dans l'eglise des Ursulines, fut enterre dans une fosse faite sous la chaire _par le travail de la Bombe_, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, decede du matin a 4 heures apres avoir recu tous les Sacrements. Jamais General n'avoit ete plus aime de sa troupe et plus universellement regrette.

Il etoit d'un esprit superieur, doux, gracieux, affable, familier a tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance de toute la Colonie: _requiescat in pace_."

The author of _Les Ursulines de Quebec_ says: "Un des projectiles ayant fait une large ouverture dans le plancher de bas, on en profita pour creuser la fosse du general."

The _Boston Post Boy and Advertiser_, in its issue of Dec. 3, 1759, contains a letter from "an officer of distinction" at Quebec to Messrs. Green and Russell, proprietors of the newspaper. This letter contains the following words: "He [_Montcalm_] died the next day; and, with a little Improvement, one of our 13-inch Sh.e.l.l-Holes served him for a Grave."

The particulars of his burial are from the _Acte Mortuaire du Marquis de Montcalm_ in the registers of the Church of Notre Dame de Quebec, and from that valuable chronicle, _Les Ursulines de Quebec_, composed by the Superior of the convent. A nun of the sisterhood, Mere Aimable Dube de Saint-Ignace, was, when a child, a witness of the scene, and preserved a vivid memory of it to the age of eighty-one.

Appendix K

Chapter 29. Sainte-Foy>

STRENGTH OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH AT THE BATTLE OF STE-FOY

In the Public Record Office (_America and West Indies_, XCIX) are preserved the tabular returns of the garrison of Quebec for 1759, 1760, sent by Murray to the War Office. They show the exact condition of each regiment, in all ranks, for every month of the autumn, winter, and spring. The return made out on the 24th of April, four days before the battle, shows that the total number of rank and file, exclusive of non commissioned officers and drummers, was 6,808, of whom 2,612 were fit for duty in Quebec, and 654 at other places in Canada, that is, at Ste Foy, Old Lorette, and the other outposts. This gives a total of 3,266 rank and file fit for duty at or near Quebec, besides which there were between one hundred and two hundred artillerymen, and a company of rangers. This was Murray's whole available force at the time. Of the rest of the 6,808 who appear in the return, 2,299 were invalids at Quebec, and 669 in New York, 538 were on service in Halifax and New York, and 36 were absent on furlough.

These figures nearly answer to the condensed statement of Fraser, and confirm the various English statements of the numbers that took part in the battle; namely, 3,140 (Knox), 3,000 (John Johnson), 3,111, and elsewhere, in round numbers, 3,000 (Murray) Levis, with natural exaggeration, says 4,000. Three or four hundred were left in Quebec to guard the walls when the rest marched out.

I have been thus particular because a Canadian writer, Garneau, says "Murray sort.i.t de la ville le 28 au matin a la tete de toute la garnison, dont les seules troupes de la ligne comptaient encore 7,714 combattants, non compris les officiers." To prove this, he cites the pay-roll of the garrison, which, in fact, corresponds to the returns of the same date, if noncommissioned officers, drummers, and artillerymen are counted with the rank and file. But Garneau falls into a double error. He a.s.sumes, first, that there were no men on the sick list, and secondly, that there were none absent from Quebec, when in reality, as the returns show, considerably more than half were in one or the other of these categories.

The pay-rolls were made out at the headquarters of each corps, and always included the entire number of men enlisted in it, whether sick or well, present or absent. On the same fallacious premises Garneau affirms that Wolfe, at the battle on the Plains of Abraham, had eight thousand soldiers, or a little less than double his actual force.

Having stated, as above, that Murray marched out of Quebec with at least 1,714 effective troops, Garneau, not very consistently, goes on to say that he advanced against Levis with six thousand or seven thousand men, and he adds that the two armies were about equal, because Levis had left some detachments behind to guard his boats and artillery. The number of the French, after they had all reached the field, was, in truth, about seven thousand; at the beginning of the fight it seems not to have exceeded five thousand. The _Relation de la seconde Bataille de Quebec_ says: "Notre pet.i.te armee consistoit _au moment de l'action_ en 3,000 hommes de troupes reglees et 2,000 Canadiens ou sauvages." A large number of Canadians came up from Sillery while the affair went on, and as the whole French army, except the detachments mentioned by Garneau, had pa.s.sed the night at no greater distance from the field than Ste-Foy and Sillery, the last man must have reached it before the firing was half over.