Plains of Abraham, 1759

The battle, stage by stage

1. 13 September 1759, about 4 a.m.

   The landing at the Anse-au-Foulon

   After a summer-long siege, the boats carrying Wolfe's first flight drift down the St. Lawrence on the ebb tide from the ships off Cap-Rouge and land at the Anse-au-Foulon, a cove about 3 km above the city. The current sets them a little past the planned point. Lieutenant-Colonel William Howe takes companies of his light infantry straight up the wooded cliff, apparently improvising, and an advance party of about 24 volunteers leads the way. At the top they overrun the guard post of Captain Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor, whose few dozen Canadian militia put up only slight opposition; Vergor himself is wounded and taken.

2. About 6–8 a.m.

   Onto the Plains

   The rest of the army climbs the path up the cliff and Wolfe marches it onto the open ground west of the walls, the Plains of Abraham. The 3rd battalion of the Royal Americans stays to hold the landing. By about 8 a.m. some 4,400 British regulars are on the plateau. Wolfe forms them facing the city, across the high ground between the cliff above the river and the Sainte-Foy road.

3. About 8–9:30 a.m.

   Two lines on the high ground

   Wolfe's line is about 1 km long and only two ranks deep, so it can cover the width of the plateau: the 35th and the Louisbourg Grenadiers on the right near the cliff edge, then the 28th, 43rd, 47th, Fraser's Highlanders and the 58th, with the 15th and the 2nd Royal Americans turned back on the left. The 48th is in reserve, Howe's light infantry to the rear. Montcalm has hurried his battalions over from the Beauport lines and forms them on the Buttes-à-Neveu, the rise in front of the walls. Canadian militia and Indigenous warriors fire from the corn, a coppice and the brush on the flanks, and the British lie down to escape it while their two light guns open fire. Bougainville's force is still hours away up the river at Cap-Rouge.

4. About 10 a.m.

   The French advance

   Not wanting to wait for the British to dig in, or for Bougainville, Montcalm orders a general advance, reportedly to shouts of 'Vive le Roi!'. His roughly 4,500 men, regulars with untrained militia now in their ranks, leave the high ground in three columns, two angled toward the British left and one toward the right (Knox). On the broken ground the centre gets ahead and the left falls behind. The French open fire at long range, about 130 yards by Knox's count, and many of the militia drop to the ground to reload, breaking up the formation.

5. Just after 10 a.m.

   The volley at forty yards

   The British stand and hold their fire until the French are about 40 yards off, then fire. By several accounts their muskets have been loaded with two balls. The fire, platoon and battalion volleys run together into what many witnesses heard as one huge discharge, and it breaks the French centre. Within a few minutes the French line is in flight. Leading the right as the line goes forward, Wolfe, already hit in the wrist, is struck in the body (most accounts say twice). Brigadier Monckton is wounded between the 43rd and 47th (Knox).

6. About 10:15–11 a.m.

   Two generals fall

   Carried a little to the rear, Wolfe is told the French are running and dies; tradition puts the spot at the Wolfe monument. Fraser's Highlanders draw their broadswords and pursue toward the Saint-Jean gate and the St. Charles, but Canadian militia firing from the woods on the Coteau Sainte-Geneviève hold them back and cover the retreat, and the Highlanders suffer heavy losses there. Montcalm, riding behind his beaten regulars, is mortally wounded just before he reaches the Saint-Louis gate. With Monckton down, Brigadier Townshend takes command, re-forms the scattered battalions and turns two of them, with the light infantry, to face Bougainville's column arriving from Cap-Rouge. Bougainville pulls back. The fighting on the plain has lasted perhaps 15 to 30 minutes.

7. 14–18 September 1759

   Quebec surrenders

   Montcalm dies in the city early on 14 September and is buried in a shell crater under the floor of the Ursulines' chapel. The French army slips away past the British that night to the Jacques-Cartier River, leaving the town to its garrison under Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay. As British siege batteries go up on the Buttes-à-Neveu and the fleet threatens the Lower Town, Ramezay signs the capitulation on 18 September with Townshend and Admiral Saunders. The Commission des champs de bataille nationaux gives 61 British killed and 603 wounded, and 150 French killed, 193 wounded, 370 taken and 28 missing (other estimates run higher). A French counter-attack on the same ground at Sainte-Foy the next April came close to retaking the city.