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The defenders of Quebec were driven off the field in overwhelming defeat. The difference was that Murray took his army back to Quebec and from behind its walls still defied his French assailant. Levis had poor artillery, but he did what he could. He entrenched and poured his fire into Quebec. In the end it was sea power which balked him.
The next day they met at a little bay quite close to the fort. On the 3rd the final advance was made. The French canoes formed lines stretching right across the lake. While the artillery was being landed in a cove out of reach of the guns of the fort Levis was having a lively skirmish with the British, who were trying to drive in their cattle and save their tents.
In the daytime action eased the strain, and at last she was rewarded by seeing from the point of Levis, the citadel of Quebec. They were questioned and kept in check for a time, but at length Aaron and herself were let cross the river. It was her first sight of Quebec, and its massive, impregnable form struck a chill to her heart: it suggested great sternness behind it.
It is said Montcalm had been anxious to occupy it, and intrench it with four thousand men, but was overruled on the supposition that the upper town, about which official Quebec felt most concern, would be outside its range of fire. If this was so, they were soon to be undeceived. The occupation of Point Lévis by Monckton's brigade, which Wolfe now ordered on that service, need not detain us.
Quebec was in peril again, but now from the French. De Levis, who succeeded Montcalm as the military leader of New France, gathering together at Montreal all the fragments of the French power in Canada, swore to retake Quebec. Robert, Tayoga and Willet, with the rangers, served in the garrison of Quebec throughout the long and bitter winter that followed.
My object was to cross the river softly, skirt the Levis shore, pass the Isle of Orleans, and so steal down the river. There was excitement in the town, as we could tell from the lights flashing along the shore, and boats soon began to patrol the banks, going swiftly up and down, and extending a line round to the St. Charles River towards Beauport.
The number of dead lying before the lines is variously given at from eight hundred to three thousand. Montcalm himself, who was somewhat elated by his victory, gives this last number in one of his letters, though he elsewhere says two thousand; while Lévis, in his Journal de la Guerre, says "about eight hundred."
What had occurred on the day of Jessica's marriage Perrot had, with the Abbe de Casson's help, written to Iberville. But they had had no words together. Now, in a room of the citadel which looked out on the darkness of the river and the deeper gloom of the Levis shore, they sat and talked, a single candle burning, their weapons laid on the table between them.
Shelldrake brought in the apples and water we were discussing the plan as a settled thing. Hollins had an engagement to deliver Temperance lectures in Ohio during the summer, but decided to postpone his departure until August, so that he might, at least, spend two months with us. Faith Levis couldn't go, at which, I think, we were all secretly glad.
The column of Lévis, with Indians to lead the way, moved through the forest towards the fort, and Montcalm followed with the main body; then the artillery boats rounded the point that had hid them from the sight of the English, saluting them as they did so with musketry and cannon; while a host of savages put out upon the lake, ranged their canoes abreast in a line from shore to shore, and advanced slowly, with measured paddle-strokes and yells of defiance.
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