to servethe Canadians in place of bayonets.  All the workmen aboutMontreal were busied in making tools and gun-carriages.  Stores were impressed from the merchants; and certain articles, which could not otherwise be had, were smuggled, with extraordinary address, out of Quebec itself.[827] Early in spring the militia received orders to muster for the march.  There were doubts and discontent; but, says a contemporary, “sensible people dared not speak, for if they did they were set down as English.”  Some there were who in secret called the scheme “Levis’ folly;” yet it was perfectly rational, well conceived, and conducted with vigor and skill.  Two frigates, two sloops-of-war, and a number of smaller craft still remained in the river, under command of Vauquelin, the brave officer who haddistinguished himself at the siege of Louisbourg.  The storesand cannon were placed on board these vessels, the army embarkedin a fleet of bateaux, and on the twentieth of April thewhole set out together for the scene of action.  They comprised eight battalions of troops of the line and two of colony troops; with the colonial artillery, three thousand Canadians, and four hundred Indians.  When they left Montreal, their effective strength, besides Indians, is said by Levis to have been six thousand nine hundred and ten, a number which was increased as he advanced by the garrisons of Jacques-Cartier, Deschambault, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, as well as by the Canadians on both side of the St. Lawrence below Three Rivers; forVaudreuil had ordered the militia captains to join his standard, with all their followers, armed and equipped, on pain of death.[828] These accessions appear to have raised his force to between eight and nine thousand.

[Footnote 827:  __Vaudreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1760_.]

[Footnote 828:  Vaudreuil aux Capitaines de Milice, 16 Avril, 1760.  I am indebted to Abbe H.R.  Casgrain for a copy of this letter.]

The ice still clung to the river banks, the weather was bad, and the navigation difficult; but on the twenty-sixth the army landed at St. Augustin, crossed the river of Cap-Rouge on bridges of their own making, and moved upon the English outpost at Old Lorette.  The English abandoned it and fell backto Ste.-Foy.  Levis followed.  Night came on, with a gale from the southeast, a driving rain, and violent thunder, unusual at that season.  The road, a bad and broken one, led through themarsh called La Suede.  Causeways and bridges broke down under the weight of the marching columns and plunged the men into water, mud, and half-thawed ice.  “It was a frightful night,” says Levis; “so dark that but for the flashes of lightning we should have been forced to stop.”  The break of day found the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther side of the marsh.  The storm had abated; and they saw before them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church