Compliments having been thus exchanged, it remained for Phips to make good his challenge.  If we compare the four English and American sieges of Quebec, the attack by Phips will be seen to have little in common with those of Kirke and Montgomery, but to resemble rather strikingly the attack by Wolfe.  Without fighting, Kirke swooped down upon a garrison which was exhausted by starvation.  Arnold and Montgomery operated without a fleet.  But while Phips’s attempt is unlike Wolfe’s in that it ended in failure, the presence of the fleet and the attempt to effect a landing below the mouth of the St Charles present features of real similarity.  It is clear that Phips received intelligence from prisoners of a possible landing above the town, at the spot where Wolfe carried out his daring and desperate coup de main.  But, anticipating Wolfe in another quarter, he chose to make his first attack on the flats rather than on the heights.

The troops ordinarily stationed at Quebec were increased just after Phips’s arrival by a force of seven hundred regulars and militiamen under Callieres, who had come down from Montreal with all possible haste.  So agile were the French and so proficient in irregular warfare that Phips found it difficult to land any considerable detachment in good order.  Thirteen hundred of the English did succeed in forming on the Beauport Flats, after wading through a long stretch of mud.  There followed a preliminary skirmish in which three hundred French were driven back with no great loss, after inflicting considerable damage on the invaders.  But though the English reached the east bank of the St Charles they could do no more.  Phips wasted his ammunition on a fruitless and ill-timed bombardment, which was answered with much spirit from the cliffs.  Meanwhile the musketeers on the bank of the St Charles were unable to advance alone and received no proper supply of stores from the ships.  Harassed by the Canadians, wet, cold, and starving, they took to the boats, leaving behind them five cannon.  After this nothing happened, save deliberations on the part of Phips and his officers as to whether there remained anything that could be done other than to sail for home, beaten and humiliated, with a heavy burden of debt to hang round the neck of a too ambitious Massachusetts.  Thus ended the second siege of Quebec (October 23, 1690).

Frontenac had lost two of his best soldiers—­Sainte-Helene, of the fighting Le Moynes, and the Chevalier de Clermont; but, this notwithstanding, the victory was felt to be complete.  The most precious trophy was the flag of Phips’s ship, which a shot from the ramparts had knocked into the river, whence it was rescued and brought ashore in triumph.  Best of all, the siege had been too short to bring famine in its train.  The loss of life was inconsiderable, and in prestige the soldiery of New France now stood on a pinnacle which they had never before attained.  When we consider the paucity of the forces engaged, this repulse of the English from Quebec may not seem an imposing military achievement.  But Canada had put forth her whole strength and had succeeded where failure would have been fatal.  In the shouts of rejoicing which followed Phips’s withdrawal we hear the cry of a people reborn.