but surely not with justice! He had every
reason to count on Bougainville and his twenty-three hundred men, who
were no farther from Wolfe's rear than he himself was from the English
front. The British held the entire water. Wolfe once intrenched on the
plateau, the rest of his army, guns, and stores could be brought up at
will, and the city defences on that side were almost worthless. Lastly,
provisions with the French were woefully scarce; the lower country had
been swept absolutely bare. Montcalm depended on Montreal for every
mouthful of food, and Wolfe was now between him and his source of
supply.

By nine o'clock Montcalm had all his men in front of the western walls
of the city and was face to face with Wolfe, only half a mile separating
them. His old veterans of William Henry, Oswego, and Ticonderoga were
with him, the reduced regiments of Bearn, Royal Rousillon, Languedoc, La
Sarre, and La Guienne, some thirteen hundred strong, with seven hundred
colony regulars and a cloud of militia and Indians. Numbers of these
latter had been pushed forward as skirmishers into the thickets, woods,
and cornfields which fringed the battle-field, and had caused great
annoyance and some loss to the British, who were lying down in their
ranks, reserving their strength and their ammunition for a supreme
effort. Three pieces of cannon, too, had been brought to play on
them--no small trial to their steadiness; for, confident of victory, it
was not to Wolfe's interest to join issue till Montcalm had enough of
his men upon the ridge to give finality to such a blow. At the same time
the expected approach of Bougainville in the rear had to be watched for
and anticipated.

It was indeed a critical and anxious moment! The Forty-eighth regiment
were stationed as a reserve of Wolfe's line, though to act as a check
rather to danger from Bougainville than as a support to the front
attacks in which they took no part. Part, too, of Townshend's brigade,
who occupied the left of the line nearest to the wooded slopes in which
the plain terminated, were drawn up _en potence_, or at right angles to
the main column, in case of attacks from flank or rear. The Bougainville
incident is, in fact, a feature of this critical struggle that has been
too generally ignored, but in such a fashion that inferences might be
drawn, and have been drawn, detrimental to that able officer's sagacity.
Theoretically he should have burst on the rear of Wolfe's small ar