Battle of Quebec

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Quebec, battle of (1759). The capture of Quebec was the culmination of the British campaign in Canada during the French and Indian war. In June 1759 a convoy of ships carrying 8, 500 British troops headed down the St Lawrence and set up a base of operations on the Île d'Orléans, opposite Quebec. To the east the banks of the river were heavily defended against a landing, but scouting revealed a cove on the banks of the St Lawrence west of the city, below the dominant Plains of Abraham, that could be used for an amphibious assault. On 13 September, the British commander Wolfe led a force of 1, 700 to seize this vital point and scramble up the cliffs. Once on the high ground above the city the British mustered 5, 000 men and the French, preceded by swarms of Indian and French-Canadian sharpshooters, deployed to meet them. A brisk firefight ensued, in which both Wolfe and the French commander Montcalm were mortally wounded. Wolfe expired knowing that victory was in his grasp: the city surrendered on 17 September 1759, the beginning of a run of victories that temporarily secured North America for the British crown.

— Toby McLeod

In the French and Indian War, conquest of New France presupposed the capture of Québec, the citadel controlling access to the St. Lawrence River. Late in June 1759, 141 British warships and transports brought nearly 9,000 regulars and provincials, commanded by Maj. Gen. James Wolfe, to challenge nearly 16,000 defenders under Gen. Louis‐Joseph, marquis de Montcalm. For more than two months the British bombarded the city, destroyed farms, and attempted landings, without luring the French from their formidable defenses.

On 13 September, a desperate General Wolfe led 4,400 troops in a risky night landing, scaled a 150‐foot cliff, and secured an exposed position. On the Plains of Abraham outside the fortress, Montcalm, acting with uncharacteristic haste, attacked with forces that barely outnumbered the British. The battle lasted half an hour and killed 658 British and 644 French, with Wolfe among the dead and Montcalm among the dying, but it proved a British victory.

With British control of the Plains of Abraham, four days later the French surrendered the still‐defensible city. Viewed by some as a coup de grâce to a crippled empire, and by others as a preliminary victory, the battle is generally seen as the poignant climax of the Anglo‐French struggle for North America.

Bibliography

• C. P. Stacey, Quebec, 1759: The Siege and the Battle, 1959

A 1759 battle in the French and Indian War (1754-63) that is viewed as the climax in the struggle between Britain and France for North America. British troops under Maj. Gen. James Wolfe attacked the city and surroundings for two months starting in June before making a daring nighttime landing to secure a strategic position. The French general Louis-Joseph Montcalm attacked the invaders hastily and without adequate force, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides and control of the city by the English.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

In 1759, the year after the fall of Louisburg, Nova Scotia, British General James Wolfe was given command of 9,280 men, mostly regulars, to capture Quebec. Wolfe's force sailed 4 June 1759, for the Saint Lawrence River landing on the circle d'Orléans below Quebec on 27 June. Wolfe's army partially encircled Quebec with soldiers on the east, batteries on the south bank, and the fleet upstream. His coordinated attacks by land and water in July and August were rebuffed.

On 3 September the British secretly moved 3,000 soldiers to ships upstream. On the night of 12 September, Wolfe slipped a strong force downstream in small boats and effected a surprise landing near the city. Wolfe's force overpowered a small guard, captured an adjacent battery, and made it possible for about 5,000 troops to land safely and climb to the heights of the Plains of Abraham by six o'clock in the morning.

In this position, Wolfe threatened Quebec's communications with Montreal and inner Canada. In the formal eighteenth-century manner, Wolfe arrayed his force by eight o'clock. At ten o'clock, the French under Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm formed for a conventional assault, which was met by formal volleys from the British battalions. Shots were exchanged for a few moments only, then the French wavered. The British charged and the French fled. Wolfe was killed on the field and Montcalm was carried off mortally wounded. Wolfe's successor closed in, and the surrender of Quebec on 18 September made inevitable British hegemony in Canada and the close of the French and Indian War, with the capture of Montreal, the following year.

Bibliography

Donaldson, Gordon. Battle for a Continent, Quebec 1759. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.

LaPierre, Laurier L. 1759: The Battle for Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1990.

Parkman Jr., Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe. New York: Collier Books, 1962.