[Footnote 790:  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

At least he might have taken a night for reflection.  He was safe behind the St. Charles.  The English, spent by fighting, toil, and want of sleep, were in no condition to disturb him.  A part of his own men were in deadly need of rest; the night would have brought refreshment, and the morning might have brought wise counsel.  Vaudreuil would not wait, and orders were given at once for retreat.[791] It began at nine o’clock that evening.  Quebec was abandoned to its fate.  The cannon were left in the lines of Beauport, the tents in the encampments, and provisions enough in the storehouses to supply the army for a week.  “The loss of the Marquis de Montcalm,” says a French officer then on the spot, “robbed his successors of their senses, and they thought of nothing but flight; such was their fear that the enemy would attack the intrenchments the next day.  The army abandoned the camp in such disorder that the like was never known."[792] “It was not a retreat,” says Johnstone, who himself a part of it, “but an abominable flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to cut all our army to pieces.  The soldiers were all mixed, and scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army were at their heels.”  They passed Charlesbourg, Lorette, and St. Augustin, till, on the fifteenth, they found rest on the impregnable hill of Jacques-Cartier, by the brink of the St. Lawrence, thirty miles from danger.

[Footnote 791:  Livre d’Ordres, Ordre du 13 Sept. 1759.]

[Footnote 792:  Foligny, Journal memoratif.]

In the night of humiliation when Vaudreuil abandoned Quebec, Montcalm was breathing his last within its walls.  When he was brought wounded from the field, he was placed in the house of the Surgeon Arnoux, who was then with Bourlamaque at Isle-aux-Noix, but whose younger brother, also a surgeon, examined the wound and pronounced it mortal.  “I am glad of it,” Montcalm said quietly; and then asked how long he had to live.  “Twelve hours, more or less,” was the reply.  “So much the better,” he returned.  “I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”  He is reported to have said that since he had lost the battle it consoled him to have been defeated by so brave an enemy; and some of his last words were in praise of his successor, Levis, for whose talents and fitness for command he expressed high esteem.  When Vaudreuil sent to ask his opinion, he gave it; but when Ramesay, commandant of the garrison, came to receive his orders, he replied:  “I will neither give orders nor interfere any further.  I have much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country.  My time is very short; therefore pray leave me.  I wish you all comfort, and to be happily extricated from your present perplexities.”  Nevertheless he thought to the last of those who had been under his command, and sent the following note to Brigadier Townshend:  “Monsieur, the humanity of the English sets my mind at peace concerning the fate of the French prisoners and the Canadians.  Feel towards them as they have caused me to feel.  Do not let them perceive that they have changed masters.  Be their protector as I have been their father."[793]