destitute
Canadians to pay for them.[704]

[Footnote 704: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 28 Mai, 1759_.]

Five battalions from France, nearly all the colony troops, and the
militia from every part of Canada poured into Quebec, along with a
thousand or more Indians, who, at the call of Vaudreuil, came to lend
their scalping-knives to the defence. Such was the ardor of the people
that boys of fifteen and men of eighty were to be seen in the camp.
Isle-aux-Coudres and Isle d'Orleans were ordered to be evacuated, and an
excited crowd on the rock of Quebec watched hourly for the approaching
fleet. Days passed and weeks passed, yet it did not appear. Meanwhile
Vaudreuil held council after council to settle a plan of defence, They
were strange scenes: a crowd of officers of every rank, mixed pell-mell
in a small room, pushing, shouting, elbowing each other, interrupting
each other; till Montcalm in despair, took each aside after the meeting
was over, and made him give his opinion in writing.[705]

[Footnote 705: _Journal du Siege de Quebec depose a la Bibliotheque de
Hartwell, en Angleterre_. (Printed at Quebec, 1836.)]

He himself had at first proposed to encamp the army on the plains of
Abraham and the meadows of the St. Charles, making that river his line
of defence;[706] but he changed his plan, and, with the concurrence of
Vaudreuil, resolved to post his whole force on the St. Lawrence below
the city, with his right resting on the St. Charles, and his left on the
Montmorenci. Here, accordingly, the troops and militia were stationed as
they arrived. Early in June, standing at the northeastern brink of the
rock of Quebec, one could have seen the whole position at a glance. On
the curving shore from the St. Charles to the rocky gorge of the
Montmorenci, a distance of seven or eight miles, the whitewashed
dwellings of the parish of Beauport stretched down the road in a double
chain, and the fields on both sides were studded with tents, huts, and
Indian wigwams. Along the borders of the St. Lawrence, as far as the eye
could distinguish them, gangs of men were throwing up redoubts,
batteries, and lines of intrenchment. About midway between the two
extremities of the encampment ran the little river of Beauport; and on
the rising ground just beyond it stood a large stone house, round which
the tents were thickly clustered; for here Montcalm had made his
headquarters.

[Footnote 706: _Livre d'Ordres, Disposition pour s'opposer a la