Most of the French writers of the time mention these barbarities without much comment, while Vaudreuil loudly denounces them.  Yet he himself was answerable for atrocities incomparably worse, and on a far larger scale.  He had turned loose his savages, red and white, along a frontier of six hundred miles, to waste, burn, and murder at will.  “Women and children,” such were the orders of Wolfe, “are to be treated with humanity; if any violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished with death.”  These orders were generally obeyed.  The English, with the single exception of Montgomery, killed none but armed men in the act of resistance or attack; Vaudreuil’s war-parties spared neither age nor sex.

Montcalm let the parishes burn, and still lay fast intrenched in his lines of Beauport.  He would not imperil all Canada to save a few hundred farmhouses; and Wolfe was as far as ever from the battle that he coveted.  Hitherto, his attacks had been made chiefly below the town; but, these having failed, he now changed his plan and renewed on a larger scale the movements begun above it in July.  With every fair wind, ships and transports passed the batteries of Quebec, favored by a hot fire from Point Levi, and generally succeeded, with more or less damage, in gaining the upper river.  A fleet of flatboats was also sent thither, and twelve hundred troops marched overland to embark in them, under Brigadier Murray.  Admiral Holmes took command of the little fleet now gathered above the town, and operations in that quarter were systematically resumed.

To oppose them, Bougainville was sent from the camp at Beauport with fifteen hundred men.  His was a most arduous and exhausting duty.  He must watch the shores for fifteen or twenty miles, divide his force into detachments, and subject himself and his followers to the strain of incessant vigilance and incessant marching.  Murray made a descent at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and was repulsed with loss.  He tried a second time at another place, was met before landing by a body of ambushed Canadians, and was again driven back, his foremost boats full of dead and wounded.  A third time he succeeded, landed at Deschambault, and burned a large building filled with stores and all the spare baggage of the French regular officers.  The blow was so alarming that Montcalm hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived the English were gone.

Vaudreuil now saw his mistake in sending the French frigates up the river out of harm’s way, and withdrawing their crews to serve the batteries of Quebec.  Had these ships been there, they might have overpowered those of the English in detail as they passed the town.  An attempt was made to retrieve the blunder.  The sailors were sent to man the frigates anew and attack the squadron of Holmes.  It was too late.  Holmes was already too strong for them, and they were recalled.  Yet the difficulties of the English still seemed insurmountable.  Dysentery and fever broke out in their camps, the number of their effective men was greatly reduced, and the advancing season told them that their work must be done quickly, or not done at all.