ty-fifth,
declared that their countrymen would gladly accept his offers but for
the threats of their commanders that if they did so the Indians should
be set upon them. The prisoners said further that "they had been under
apprehension for several days past of having a body of four hundred
barbarians sent to rifle their parish and habitations."[718] Such
threats were not wholly effectual. A French chronicler of the time says:
"The Canadians showed their disgust every day, and deserted at every
opportunity, in spite of the means taken to prevent them." "The people
were intimidated, seeing all our army kept in one body and solely on the
defensive; while the English, though far less numerous, divided their
forces, and undertook various bold enterprises without meeting
resistance."[719]

[Footnote 718: Knox, I. 347; compare pp. 339, 341, 346.]

[Footnote 719: _Journal du Siege_ (Bibliotheque de Hartwell).]

On the eighteenth the English accomplished a feat which promised
important results. The French commanders had thought it impossible for
any hostile ship to pass the batteries of Quebec; but about eleven
o'clock at night, favored by the wind, and covered by a furious
cannonade from Point Levi, the ship "Sutherland," with a frigate and
several small vessels, sailed safely by and reached the river above the
town. Here they at once attacked and destroyed a fireship and some small
craft that they found there, Now, for the first time, it became
necessary for Montcalm to weaken his army at Beauport by sending six
hundred men, under Dumas, to defend the accessible points in the line of
precipices between Quebec and Cap-Rouge. Several hundred more were sent
on the next day, when it became known that the English had dragged a
fleet of boats over Point Levi, launched them above the town, and
despatched troops to embark in them. Thus a new feature was introduced
into the siege operations, and danger had risen on a side where the
French thought themselves safe. On the other hand, Wolfe had become more
vulnerable than ever. His army was now divided, not into three parts,
but into four, each so far from the rest that, in case of sudden attack,
it must defend itself alone. That Montcalm did not improve his
opportunity was apparently due to want of confidence in his militia.

The force above the town did not lie idle. On the night of the
twentieth, Colonel Carleton, with six hundred men, rowed eighteen miles
up the river, and landed a