erate situation might have been attempted by
risking all for all. A surprise in a dark night must naturally spread
universal terror, disorder and panic amongst those who are taken
unawares, and must soon be communicated through all the quarters of
the town. The soldiers are so much the more terrified that they know
not where they are most in danger; not like during a siege, where the
place for the assault is marked by the breach. Their heads turn, and,
deprived of judgment, coolness and reflection, they think rather of
escaping the slaughter that ensues when a town is being captured in
this manner, than of defending the ramparts. But Quebec being
accessible only on that side of it which faces the heights of Abraham,
and having nothing to fear elsewhere, the moment an alarm is sounded,
all the force of the garrison must naturally be there. Thus the
English having seven thousand men in the town--almost as many as our
army proposed for the escalade to invest all that part of the town
open to attack--it is likely that we should have lost the half of our
army in the attempt, and at last, after a horrible slaughter of men,
have been obliged to return ignominiously from whence we came.
Besides, supposing that we had even taken the Lower Town by escalade,
we would not have been further advanced. The English, in half an hour
afterwards, by burning it, by throwing down from the Upper Town upon
the roofs of the houses fire pots, shells and other combustible
matter, could have soon chased us out of it, or buried us under its
ruins. This project, after having furnished for a long time matter for
the daily conversations of Montrealers, was at last considered by M.
de Levis, and classed as it deserved, amongst the vagaries of bedlam;
he substituting a scheme in its place which was reasonable, well
combined, doing honor to his ability and talent.

[Footnote A: The four or five paces of 1760 have now attained seven or
eight acres.--(L)]

M. de Levis, in giving an account to the Court of the loss of all our
artillery and stores at Quebec, gave likewise all possible assurances
that he would re-take the town in the spring and save the colony,
provided they would send to him from Europe a ship loaded with
field-pieces and ammunition, to set sail from Europe in the month of
February, in order to be in the St. Lawrence river before the arrival
of the English, and near Quebec in the month of April. He collected
our army as soon as the season