Wolf es first attempt to break through was made some distance up the Montmorency, where he tried to force his way across the fords and so attack the entrenchments in the rear. But he was repulsed with loss, in a bush-fight in which his regulars were at a great disad vantage. His second attempt was a more serious one. On 31 July he tried to carry the Montmorency Heights by storm, a mile on the Quebec side of the falls. But as his troops had to be collected from several quarters, in full view of the French, Montcalm easily antici pated him at the right spot, before he could deliver the assault. Besides the faulty British plan could not be carried out even according to Wolfe's intentions, because the grenadiers, 1,000 strong, suddenly broke into a wild charge before being properly formed up, and lost nearly half their numbers in a fruitless effort to scale the heights. Then a terrific thunderstorm burst on the scene of carnage, making the heights more slippery than ever, and so he had no choice but to call off his men at once. After this repulse Wolfe fell seriously ill, and toward the end of August he gave his brigadiers, Monckton, Townshend and Murray, a memo randum of three other plans for assaultink the trenches and asked them to consult together for the public utility' Their council of war resulted in a complete rejection of all his sug gestions; because, as they well remarked, the storming of such works from open ground would certainly be both difficult and dangerous. Moreover, even if the works themselves were carried, there would still remain the fortified line of the Saint Charles, as well as the heights of the promotory beyond, to keep him out of Quebec, until the lateness of the season would compel him to raise the siege. Their own plan was to take all the available men up the Saint Lawrence, and land at any suitable point be tween Cap Rouge, which was nine miles, and Pointe aux Trembles, which was 22 miles, above Quebec. Wolfe informed Pitt, in a dispatch written on 2 September, that he had acquiesced in this plan, and intended to put it into oper ation at once.
The Montmorency camp was cleverly evacu ated, without the loss of a man, by a general naval and military demonstration against the entrenchments, which made the French feel sure that another attempt to storm the posi tion there was about to take place. From 7 to 10 September the rain suspended all operations; and on 10 September Wolfe made his .final reconnaissance. He was already well posted on the lie of the land in every direction, and the idea of attacking above Quebec was thor oughly familiar to his mind long before it was mentioned by his brigadiers. On 19 May he had said to his uncle, that he "reckoned on a smart action at the passage of the Saint Charles unless we can steal a detachment up the river and land it there, four, five miles, or more above Quebec.* This plan was better than the brigadiers', as it contemplated seizing the ground much closer to Quebec than the nearest objective point they proposed trying. At the final reconnaissance he chose the Foulon, where a path led up to the Plains of Abraham, within two miles of the walls. If he could get up there without any serious check, he saw that he could forestall Montcalm by forming a line less than three-quarters of a mile from the city, where the promontory was narrow enough to be commanded by his small army, and where the mixed regulars and irregulars of New France would be forced to meet his homo geneous British red-coats on a flat and open ground. The French were on the alert every where along the north shore, from the falls up to Pointe aux Trembles, a distance of 29 miles — except just at the Foulon itself. They could
not tell what Wolfe was about, nor where the bulk of his men were, behind the impenetrable screen of the ubiquitous British fleet. They were naturally very apprehensive of another desperate attack on their trenches; they were well prepared against an assault upon the town, which was so strongly fortified by nature; while the constant movement of the fleet, and occa sional landings from it, in the vicinity of Pointe aux Trembles, 22 miles up, made them think that any new plan would probably take the form of an advance in force by land from somewhere thereabouts. One man, indeed, besides Wolfe, was thinking of the Foulon, and that man was Montcalm. On 5 September he had sent the regiment of Guienne to the Heights of Abra ham, but Vaudreuil withdrew it on 7 Septem ber, and left no defense there, except the puny Samos battery near Sillery Point, and 100 mili tiamen at the top of the Foulon, under the treacherous Vergor. Even on 12 September, the very eve of the battle, Montcalm had again ordered the same regiment back, this time to the Foulon itself. However, Vaudreuil had again countermanded the order, saying, "We'll see about it to-morrow? But Wolfe himself was up there on that morrow [For some ac count of the battle of the Plains of Abraham, see COLONIAL WARS IN AMERICA; MONTCALM; QUEBEC; WOLFE.] The winter at Quebec, after its capture, was a terribly trying one for the little British gar, rison; and so many men died of scurvy that, in the following April, when de Levis marched out of Montreal with 7,260 men, expecting several thousand more to join him on the way, Murray could only muster 3,886 effectives. There was a second battle of the Plains, in which Levis defeated Murray, who in less than two hours lost over one-third of his men. A second in vestment followed, and Levis was in the act of advancing to storm the walls, when the van guard of the British fleet suddenly entered the harbor. The French had now no choice of action. They hurriedly abandoned their camp, and retreated, in all haste, on Montreal, both by land and water. Then, step by step, the final British advance converged on the doomed col ony. Murray came up steadily from Quebec, in close touch with Lord Colville's squadron, which the French had absolutely no means of resisting. Haviland advanced from the south by way of Lake Champlain; while Amherst, with the main army, came down the Saint Lawrence from the Lakes. When the united British army, 17,000 strong, actually landed on the Island of Montreal, the few remaining Canadians de serted Levis in a body, and he found himself left with only some 2,000 of the French regulars. The capitulation of New France oc curred two days later, on 8 Sept. 1760. The French troops were deported. The Canadians had already dispersed. The American militia went back to their homes. The fleet sailed away to their stations. The British regulars took up their winter quarters. And the New Regime began. The Seven Years' War was one of the most pregnant events in history; and its results have continued to exert a vast determin ing influence on the fortunes of every world power, down to the present day. In Europe it foretold the ultimate decline of France and Austria, and the ultimate rise of Prussia to the leadership of Germany. But its significance for the English-speaking people lies mainly in the fact that it was the most truly imperial war they ever waged; and its most dramatic episode —the battle of the Plains of Abraham — will serve to mark forever three vital stages in three great epochs of modern times— the passing of Greater France, the coming of age of Greater Britain and the birth of the United States.