by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height; the rest ascended safely by the pathway.  A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe.  When Townshend’s division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec; and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at daybreak with his invincible battalions on the Plains of Abraham, the battle-field of the Celtic and Saxon races.

“It can be but a small party, come to burn a few houses and retire,” said Montcalm, in amazement as the news reached him in his intrenchments the other side of the St. Charles; but, obtaining better information, “Then,” he cried, “they have at last got to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle and crush them before mid-day.”  And, before ten, the two armies, equal in numbers, each being composed of less than five thousand men, were ranged in presence of one another for battle.  The English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow ravines and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in discipline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their morning’s success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and love.  The doomed and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but “five weak French battalions,” of less than two thousand men, “mingled with disorderly peasantry,” formed on commanding ground.  The French had three little pieces of artillery; the English, one or two.  The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Montcalm, having summoned De Bougainville to his aid, and dispatched messenger after messenger for De Vaudreuil, who had fifteen hundred men at the camp, to come up before he should be driven from the ground, endeavored to flank the British and crowd them down the high bank of the river.  Wolfe counteracted the movement by detaching Townshend with Amherst’s regiment, and afterward a part of the Royal Americans, who formed on the left with a double front.

Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led the French army impetuously to the attack.  The ill-disciplined companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground; and fired by platoons, without unity.  Their adversaries, especially the Forty-third and the Forty-seventh, where Monckton stood, of which three men out of four were Americans, received the shock with calmness; and after having, at Wolfe’s command, reserved their fire till their enemy was within forty yards, their line began a regular, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry.  Montcalm was present everywhere, braving danger, wounded, but cheering by his example.  The second in command, De Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed.  The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the Twenty-eighth