me
ideas of effort and sacrifice, were trying their last chance in the
service of the distant mother-country, which was deserting them. The
command had passed from the hands of Montcalm into those of the general
who was afterwards a marshal and Duke of Levis. He resolved, in the
spring of 1760, to make an attempt to recover Quebec.

"All Europe," says Raynal, "supposed that the capture of the capital was
an end to the great quarrel in North America. Nobody supposed that a
handful of French who lacked everything, who seemed forbidden by fortune
itself to harbor any hope, would dare to dream of retarding inevitable
fate." On the 28th of April, the army of General de Levis, with great
difficulty maintained during the winter, debouched before Quebec on those
Plains of Abraham but lately so fatal to Montcalm.

General Murray at once sallied from the place in order to engage before
the French should have had time to pull themselves together. It was a
long and obstinate struggle; the men fought hand to hand, with
impassioned ardor, without the cavalry or the savages taking any part in
the action; at nightfall General Murray had been obliged to re-enter the
town and close the gates. The French, exhausted but triumphant, returned
slowly from the pursuit; the unhappy fugitives fell into the hands of the
Indians; General de Levis had great difficulty in putting a stop to the
carnage. In his turn he besieged Quebec.

One single idea possessed the minds of both armies; what flag would be
carried by the vessels which were expected every day in the St.
Lawrence? "The circumstances were such on our side," says the English
writer Knox, "that if the French fleet had been the first to enter the
river, the place would have fallen again into the hands of its former
masters."

On the 9th of May, an English frigate entered the harbor. A week
afterwards, it was followed by two other vessels. The English raised
shouts of joy upon the ramparts, the cannon of the place saluted the
arrivals. During the night between the 16th and 17th of May, the little
French army raised the siege of Quebec. On the 6th of September, the
united forces of Generals Murray, Amherst, and Haviland invested
Montreal.

A little wall and a ditch, intended to resist the attacks of Indians, a
few pieces of cannon eaten up with rust, and three thousand five hundred
troops--such were the means of defending Montreal. The rural population
yielded at last to th