[Footnote 766:  Joannes, Major de Quebec, Memoire sur la Campagne de 1759.]

At last the time for action came.  On Wednesday, the twelfth, the troops at St. Nicholas were embarked again, and all were told to hold themselves in readiness.  Wolfe, from the flagship “Sutherland,” issued his last general orders.  “The enemy’s force is now divided, great scarcity of provisions in their camp, and universal discontent among the Canadians.  Our troops below are in readiness to join us; all the light artillery and tools are embarked at the Point of Levi; and the troops will land where the French seem least to expect it.  The first body that gets on shore is to march directly to the enemy and drive them from any little post they may occupy; the officers must be careful that the succeeding bodies do not by any mistake fire on those who go before them.  The battalions must form on the upper ground with expedition, and be ready to charge whatever presents itself.  When the artillery and troops are landed, a corps will be left to secure the landing-place, while the rest march on and endeavor to bring the Canadians and French to a battle.  The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers inured to war is capable of doing against five weak French battalions mingled with a disorderly peasantry.”

The spirit of the army answered to that of its chief.  The troops loved and admired their general, trusted their officers, and were ready for any attempt.  “Nay, how could it be otherwise,” quaintly asks honest Sergeant John Johnson, of the fifty-eighth regiment, “being at the heels of gentlemen whose whole thirst, equal with their general, was for glory?  We had seen them tried, and always found them sterling.  We knew that they would stand by us to the last extremity.”

Wolfe had thirty-six hundred men and officers with him on board the vessels of Holmes; and he now sent orders to Colonel Burton at Point Levi to bring to his aid all who could be spared from that place and the Point of Orleans.  They were to march along the south bank, after nightfall, and wait further orders at a designated spot convenient for embarkation.  Their number was about twelve hundred, so that the entire forced destined for the enterprise was at the utmost forty-eight hundred.[767] With these, Wolfe meant to climb the heights of Abraham in the teeth of an enemy who, though much reduced, were still twice as numerous as their assailants.[768]

[Footnote 767:  See Note, end of chapter.]

[Footnote 768:  Including Bougainville’s command.  An escaped prisoner told Wolfe, a few days before, that Montcalm still had fourteen thousand men. Journal of an Expedition on the River St. Lawrence. This meant only those in the town and the camps of Beauport.  “I don’t believe their whole army amounts to that number,” wrote Wolfe to Colonel Burton, on the tenth.  He knew, however, that if Montcalm could bring all his troops together, the French would outnumber him more than two to one.]