The English avenged these reverses by capturing Port Royal.  Encouraged by this success, they sent Phipps at the head of a large troop to seize Quebec, while Winthrop attacked Montreal with three thousand men, a large number of whom were Indians.  Frontenac hastened to Quebec with M. de Callieres, governor of Montreal, the militia and the regular troops.  Already the fortifications had been protected against surprise by new and well-arranged entrenchments.  The hostile fleet appeared on October 16th, 1690, and Phipps sent an officer to summon the governor to surrender the place.  The envoy, drawing out his watch, declared with arrogance to the Count de Frontenac that he would give him an hour to decide.  “I will answer you by the mouth of my cannon,” replied the representative of Louis XIV.  The cannon replied so well that at the first shot the admiral’s flag fell into the water; the Canadians, braving the balls and bullets which rained about them, swam out to get it, and this trophy remained hanging in the cathedral of Quebec until the conquest.  The Histoire de l’Hotel-Dieu de Quebec depicts for us very simply the courage and piety of the inhabitants during this siege.  “The most admirable thing, and one which surely drew the blessing of Heaven upon Quebec was that during the whole siege no public devotion was interrupted.  The city is arranged so that the roads which lead to the churches are seen from the harbour; thus several times a day were beheld processions of men and women going to answer the summons of the bells.  The English noticed them; they called M. de Grandeville (a brave Canadian, and clerk of the farm of Tadousac, whom they had made prisoner) and asked him what it was.  He answered them simply:  ’It is mass, vespers, and the benediction.’  By this assurance the citizens of Quebec disconcerted them; they were astonished that women dared to go out; they judged by this that we were very easy in our minds, though this was far from being the case.”

It is not surprising that the colonists should have fought valiantly when their bishops and clergy set the example of devotion, when the Jesuits remained constantly among the defenders to encourage and assist on occasion the militia and the soldiers, when Mgr. de Laval, though withdrawn from the conduct of religious affairs, without even the right of sitting in the Sovereign Council, animated the population by his patriotic exhortations.  To prove to the inhabitants that the cause which they defended by struggling for their homes was just and holy, at the same time as to place the cathedral under the protection of Heaven, he suggested the idea of hanging on the spire of the cathedral a picture of the Holy Family.  This picture was not touched by the balls and bullets, and was restored after the siege to the Ursulines, to whom it belonged.