from the Beauport camp, they had come no farther than the bridge over the St. Charles, having, as he alleges, been kept there by an unauthorized order from the chief of staff, Montreuil.[785] He declares that the regulars were in such a fright that he could not stop them; but that the Canadians listened to his voice, and that it was he who rallied them at the Cote Ste.-Genevieve.  Of this the evidence is his own word.  From other accounts it would appear that the Canadians rallied themselves.  Vaudreuil lost no time in recrossing the bridge and joining the militia in the redoubt at the farther end, where a crowd of fugitives soon poured in after him.

[Footnote 784:  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 21 Sept. 1759.]

[Footnote 785:  Ibid., 5 Oct. 1759.]

The aide-de-camp Johnstone, mounted on horseback, had stopped for a moment in what is now the suburb of St. John to encourage some soldiers who were trying to save a cannon that had stuck fast in a marshy hollow; when, on spurring his horse to the higher ground, he saw within musket-shot a long line of British troops, who immediately fired upon him.  The bullets whistled about his ears, tore his clothes, and wounded his horse; which, however, carried him along the edge of the declivity to a windmill, near which was a roadway to a bakehouse on the meadow below.  He descended, crossed the meadow, reached the bridge, and rode over it to the great redoubt or hornwork that guarded its head.

The place was full of troops and Canadians in a wild panic.  “It is impossible,” says Johnstone, “to imagine the disorder and confusion I found in the hornwork.  Consternation was general.  M. de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always of the opinion of him who spoke last.  On the appearance of the English troops on the plain by the bakehouse, Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the regiment of Bearn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil ’that the hornwork would be taken in an instant by assault, sword in hand; that we all should be cut to pieces without quarter; and that nothing would save us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English.’"[786] Yet the river was wide and deep, and the hornwork was protected on the water side by strong palisades, with cannon.  Nevertheless there rose a general cry to cut the bridge of boats.  By doing so more than half the army, who had not yet crossed, would have been sacrificed.  The axemen were already at work, when they were stopped by some officers who had not lost their wits.

[Footnote 786:  Confirmed by Journal tenu a l’Armee, etc.  “Divers officiers des troupes de terre n’hesiterent point a dire, tout haut en presence du soldat, qu’il ne nous restoit d’autre ressource que celle de capituler promptement pour toute la colonie,” etc.]