number of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload.[782] The British advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still.  When the French were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of musketry answered all along the line.  The volley was delivered with remarkable precision.  In the battalions of the centre, which had suffered least from the enemy’s bullets, the simultaneous explosion was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a cannon-shot.  Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that lasted but a minute or two.  When the smoke rose, a miserable sight was revealed:  the ground cumbered with dead and wounded, the advancing masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing, gesticulating.  The order was given to charge.  Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan.  Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing.  The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as bloodhounds.  At the English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more.  Here Wolfe himself led the charge, at the head of the Louisbourg grenadiers.  A shot shattered his wrist.  He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on.  Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast.  He staggered, and sat on the ground.  Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear.  He begged them to lay him down.  They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon.  “There’s no need,” he answered; “it’s all over with me.”  A moment after, one of them cried out:  “They run; see how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep.  “The enemy, sir.  Egad, they give way everywhere!” “Go one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the dying man; “tell him to march Webb’s regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge.”  Then, turning on his side, he murmured, “Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!” and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.

[Footnote 782:  “Les Canadiens, qui etaient meles dans les bataillons, se passerent de tirer et, des qu’ils l’eussent fait, de mettre ventre a terre pour charger, ce qui rompit tout l’ordre.” Malartic a Bourlamaque, 25 Sept. 1759.]