Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire

Death or Victory: The Battle for Quebec and the Birth of Empire
Dan Snow

An epic history of the battle of Quebec, the death of Wolfe and the beginnings of Britain’s empire in North America. Military history at its best.Perched on top of a tall promontory, surrounded on three sides by the treacherous St Lawrence River, Quebec – in 1759 France's capital city in Canada – forms an almost impregnable natural fortress. That year, with the Seven Years War raging around the globe, a force of 49 ships and nearly 9,000 men commanded by the irascible General James Wolfe, navigated the river, scaled the cliffs and laid siege to the town in an audacious attempt to expel the French from North America for ever.In this magisterial book which ties in to the 250th anniversary of the battle, Dan Snow tells the story of this famous campaign which was to have far-reaching consequences for Britain's rise to global hegemony, and the world at large. Snow brilliantly sets the battle within its global context and tells a gripping tale of brutal war quite unlike those fought in Europe, where terrain, weather and native Indian tribes were as fearsome as any enemy. 'I never served so disagreeable campaign as this,' grumbled one British commander, 'it is war of the worst shape.'1759 was, without question, a year in which the decisions of men changed the world for ever. Based on original research, and told from all perspectives, this is history – military, political, human – on an epic scale.

Death or Victory

THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC AND THE BIRTH OF EMPIRE

DAN SNOW

To Mum and Dad

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#ue68cc0cd-76ef-53a6-bdea-deaf60a4deb9)

Title Page (#u88ab8719-1920-5f81-aa68-5f80c663f9fe)

Dedication (#u90f995d5-76a4-513c-836d-1a88f5e6daab)

Maps (#u1e17a193-203c-50b0-827e-c176594028f7)

Author’s Note (#u216d60c3-900e-5a73-b2cd-633755246277)

Prologue (#ua3b1500b-2c90-5006-b2df-3d45c2954b47)

One (#u6f0ccd55-66f0-5ea4-ac97-e82d6a45beaa)

Two (#u7e0a494b-7289-575b-b239-ea4b9edaa794)

Three (#u6b4a6f27-2e3c-5f46-a630-9b0dd71d1e25)

Four (#uff98e416-d2b6-5038-a54d-63ef0cf8b68f)

Five (#u275b558d-e5d9-5581-902d-d4f518c49f1e)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

AUTHOR’S NOTE (#ulink_0ee045ae-ff8a-505f-a15d-aa46fdaa6060)

‘One of the great battles of the world.’

FIELD MARSHAL MONTGOMERY

BATTLES CAN CHANGE the course of history. The fighting in North America that culminated with the battle James Wolfe fought outside the walls of Quebec on 13 September 1759 altered the world in a dramatic and lasting way. The dominance of the Anglo-Saxon model with its ideas of government, manners, trade, and finance was built on the British victory in what was truly a world war. Appropriately, I wrote this book during the course of a busy year spent all over the world. In Auckland, New Zealand, I wrote for a few hours every day and then took a fast stroll down to the glistening waters of the Hauraki Gulf to restore my energy. Every time I passed Wolfe Street I smiled; the shabby city street seemed to have little to do with the lanky, chinless, volatile commander of the British army at Quebec. It was, however, a powerful reminder of the enduring significance of the Seven Years War. Those events in the mosquito-ridden woods of New England and Canada, on the foaming seas off Western Europe, and in the shadow of the grand architecture of Quebec still matter. There are Wolfe Streets in cities in every corner of the world: Cape Town, Canberra, Baltimore, Houston, London, Liverpool, and Little Rock, Arkansas. On reflection it is not surprising that Auckland, a city that sprang into life during this time of Anglo-Saxon cultural supremacy, should have a reference, however small, to a man who helped to bring that supremacy about.

The raising of the Union Flag over Quebec and the destruction of French power in North America were far more significant for world history than the subsequent American Revolution. The revolution was merely a squabble for control over the fruits of the British victory over France and her Native allies. At the end of the Seven Years War a continent rich in farmland, minerals, and raw materials fell into the lap of the Anglo-Americans. In time, this continent would become the engine of an international system based on the rule of law, commercialism, representative institutions, and the English language. In the twentieth century North America would play the key part in defending that system as it was challenged by militarism, fascism, and communism. It was the armourer, paymaster, granary, and provider of millions of troops to defend the world order that had been born as a result of the Seven Years War.

Britain defeated France in the Seven Years War because she was able to assemble a crushing advantage in men and ships, paid for by an unprecedented level of government borrowing. By the mid-eighteenth century the French crown was unable to mobilize the country’s superior wealth or manpower nearly as effectively as its smaller neighbour, Britain. The underfunded French navy was swept from the seas by a supremely professional British Royal Navy, while its army remained bogged down in a European war against enemies kept in the field by British loans. British victory owed much to favourable credit ratings. Yet the muskets still needed firing, the ships of the line still needed expert handling, the armies and raids still needed leadership, and the men who trudged along the frontiers of empire still needed to bear the heavy burden of campaigning, fighting, and surviving. The campaign and battle at Quebec in 1759 is a reminder that it was also a victory of flesh, blood, and grit. Indeed, the battle fought on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, brief though it was, demonstrates that individuals and the choices they make matter hugely even in vast conflicts. British financial might may have projected Wolfe and his army deep into enemy territory and kept them fed and supplied but the capture of Quebec was not bound to follow.

A battle is celebrated, remembered, and studied not just because it is a decisive event, but because it looks and sounds like one. We cannot help but to be fascinated by its violent crescendos, its sounds, smells, and extremes of emotion, and the flight of one side or another. The mass of British subjects, at the time and since, could not understand or even picture a bond market and were unlikely to name streets after one, but battles can fill imaginations. To English-speaking peoples the victory at Quebec came to be seen as a milepost that marked their rise to global hegemony. Quebec symbolized, and still does, the seismic geo-political shift that occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. A shift that changed the world for ever.

In attempting to tell the story of that summer in 1759 I have been assisted by friends, colleagues, and family in at least four countries. The book would not have existed were it not for my agent, Caroline Dawnay, and my auntie, Margaret MacMillan, a historian who I can only dream of emulating. Another historian I have always respected and to whom I now owe a debt of gratitude is Professor Robert Bothwell, an expert editor who helped me to avoid terrible mistakes and improve the book in no small measure. Arabella Pike at HarperCollins provided the unflagging support that one would expect from the latest in a line of martial types. It was a privilege to be allowed to renew my partnership with Martin Redfern when Arabella left on maternity leave. Carol Anderson was stunningly efficient. Sarah Hopper was her usual brilliant self on the pictures and Sophie Goulden had the patience of a rock as she steered the project home.

Museums and libraries all over the world have been unstintingly generous with their time and advice. Dorian Hayes at the British Library was a great source of suggestions. Valerie Adams at the Public Record Office in Belfast could not have been more helpful. Pieter Van der Merwe at the National Maritime Museum was very good to give up a morning to fire volley after volley of brilliant, if totally unrelated facts and ideas at me. Richard Kemp at the Somerset Military Museum went so far beyond the call of duty that I was embarrassed. Lizzy Shipton at the Rifles Museum, Salisbury, was a great help and Alan Readman, the assistant country archivist, West Sussex, Nora Hague at the McCord Museum, Montreal, Odile Girard at the Library and Archives Canada, and the team at Harvard all made research that little bit easier.

I was blessed with researchers, translators, and givers of advice. The book would not have been written without Gwyneth MacMillan in Quebec. She was efficient, intelligent, generous, and cheerful. Eddie Kolla in Paris was enormously helpful. Michael Manulak was very helpful in the opening stages. My sister, Rebecca Snow, is an expert in her own right and Roger Nixon and David Mendel were stalwarts; the latter walked me around Quebec bringing the eighteenth century alive on every street. Glen Steppler, Laurence Westgaph and Erica Charters were very good to me while Isabelle Pila and Brigitte Sawyer were vital translators.

Shuna and Katie Snow encouraged me and made me laugh through the process. My parents, Peter Snow and Ann MacMillan, were as unfailingly supportive as they have been of all my projects through the years. They read every word and, more importantly, they have always told me I could do it.

PROLOGUE (#ulink_647c0497-e811-5ebe-91ae-f0211c09de93)

AN HOUR BEFORE SUNRISE the hated drummers marched along the rows of tents. Their sticks beat the ‘General’, driving a clear message into the sleeping brains of the men. Even those befuddled by ‘screech’, cheap rum brewed by boiling the sediment from molasses barrels, were dragged from their slumbers. Men clambered over their drowsy comrades and emerged into the open air. Their feet squelched in the urine-soaked ground, for soldiers invariably eased themselves at the entrance to their tents or even inside where they slept. For an hour a mass of figures in the semi-darkness jostled and cursed. But as the light grew so did their regularity. By the time the drummers beat the ‘Assembly’ at 0500 hours the tents had been struck, kit packed, weapons retrieved and the men bundled onto the assembly area to line up by company and regiment, ready for inspection, colours unfurled, sharp new flints securely fastened in the jaws of their muskets. Companies of between 50 and 100 men were commanded by a captain who knew every one of them by name. When he was happy that his men were properly attired, their weapons clean and thirty-six rounds in their cartridge cases he reported to the major or lieutenant colonel and soon the whole force was ready to march.

Groups of light infantrymen and rangers set off first. The British force had been in the heart of Canada for less than a week and they had been given a shocking immersion into the world of insurgency, sniping, ambush and Native American warfare. Bodies of soldiers that strayed from the riverbank were found horribly killed and mutilated, their scalps taken as trophies by Native Americans and the Canadians who had learnt their way of war from them. Civilians in this populous part of Canada were trapped in between. Their farmhouses ransacked, their provisions confiscated by hungry warriors. That very morning a patrol of British light troops had searched one house and finding no one set it on fire. A British officer reported that ‘they were alarmed with bitter shrieks and cries of women and children’. They had, apparently, ‘foolishly concealed themselves among some lumber in a cellar’. British troops ‘very humanely exerted themselves for the relief of those miserable wretches, but their best endeavours were ineffectual…these unhappy people perished in the flames’. The officer wrote in his diary that ‘Such alas! are the direful effects of war.’

(#litres_trial_promo) By the end of the summer an incident like this would barely raise a comment as atrocity fed atrocity and the campaign became a nightmare of terror, retribution, and disease.

This was the first serious push away from the beaches where the British had landed just days before. Major General James Wolfe, their commander, had ordered this force to move west, away from the comforting presence of the fleet anchored in the river, to tighten the noose around Quebec, a fortress said to be impregnable, capital of the vast French North American empire. They were to seize a prominent piece of ground called Point Lévis from where British guns could fire across the river into Quebec. The soldiers knew the French would not let this probing force march with impunity. The terrain favoured the defence with thick woodland and a steep rise overlooking the track. One British officer described the route as ‘no regular road’ but ‘only a serpentine path with trees and under-wood on every side of us’.