For more than a month the town had stood the enemy’s fire; all the buildings were reduced to ruins, and the French had not yet budged from their camp of Ange-Gardien.  On the 31st of July, General Wolfe, with three thousand men, came and attacked them in front by the River St. Lawrence, and in flank by the River Montmorency.  He was repulsed by the firm bravery of the Canadians, whose French impetuosity seemed to have become modified by contact with the rough climates of the north.  Immovable in their trenches, they waited until the enemy was within range; and, when at length they fired, the skill of the practised hunters made fearful havoc in the English ranks.  Everywhere repulsed, General Wolfe in despair was obliged to retreat.  He all but died of vexation, overwhelmed with the weight of his responsibility.  “I have only a choice of difficulties left,” he wrote to the English cabinet.  Aid and encouragement did not fail him.

The forts of Carillon on Lake Champlain and of Niagara on Lake Ontario were both in the hands of the English.  A portion of the Canadians had left the camp to try and gather in the meagre crops which had been cultivated by the women and children.  In the night between the 12th and 13th of September, General Wolfe made a sudden dash upon the banks of the St. Lawrence; he landed at the creek of Foulon.  The officers had replied in French to the Qui vive ( Who goes there?) of the sentinels, who had supposed that what they saw passing was a long-expected convoy of provisions; at daybreak the English army was ranged in order of battle on the Plains of Abraham; by evening, the French were routed, the Marquis of Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.

General Wolfe had not been granted time to enjoy his victory.  Mortally wounded in a bayonet charge which he himself headed, he had been carried to the rear.  The surgeons who attended to him kept watching the battle from a distance.  “They fly,” exclaimed one of them.  “Who?” asked the general, raising himself painfully.  “The French!” was the answer.  “Then I am content to die.” he murmured, and expired.

[Illustration:  Death of Wolfe——­209]

Montcalm had fought like a soldier in spite of his wounds; when he fell he still gave orders about the measures to be taken and the attempts to be made.  “All is not lost,” he kept repeating.  He was buried in a hole pierced by a cannonball in the middle of the church of the Ursulines; and there he still rests.  In 1827, when all bad feeling had subsided, Lord Dalhousie, the then English governor of Canada, ordered the erection at Quebec of an obelisk in marble bearing the names and busts of Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription:  Mortem virtus communem, famam historia, monumentum posteritas dedit [Valor, history, and posterity assigned fellowship in death, fame, and memorial].

In 1759, the news of the death of the two generals was accepted as a sign of the coming of the end.  Quebec capitulated on the 18th of September, notwithstanding the protests of the population.  The government of Canada removed to Montreal.