f Abraham

Wolfe was deeply moved by the disaster at the heights of Montmorenci,
and in a General Order on the next day he rebuked the grenadiers for
their precipitation. "Such impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike
proceedings destroy all order, make it impossible for the commanders to
form any disposition for an attack, and put it out of the general's
power to execute his plans. The grenadiers could not suppose that they
could beat the French alone."

The French were elated by their success. "Everybody," says the
commissary Berniers, "thought that the campaign was as good as ended,
gloriously for us." They had been sufficiently confident even before
their victory; and the bearer of a flag of truce told the English
officers that he had never imagined they were such fools as to attack
Quebec with so small a force. Wolfe, on the other hand, had every reason
to despond. At the outset, before he had seen Quebec and learned the
nature of the ground, he had meant to begin the campaign by taking post
on the Plains of Abraham, and thence laying siege to the town; but he
soon discovered that the Plains of Abraham were hardly more within his
reach than was Quebec itself. Such hope as was left him lay in the
composition of Montcalm's army. He respected the French commander, and
thought his disciplined soldiers not unworthy of the British steel; but
he held his militia in high scorn, and could he but face them in the
open field, he never doubted the result. But Montcalm also distrusted
them, and persisted in refusing the coveted battle.

Wolfe, therefore, was forced to the conviction that his chances were of
the smallest. It is said that, despairing of any decisive stroke, he
conceived the idea of fortifying Isle-aux-Coudres, and leaving a part of
his troops there when he sailed for home, against another attempt in the
spring. The more to weaken the enemy and prepare his future conquest, he
began at the same time a course of action which for his credit one would
gladly wipe from the record; for, though far from inhuman, he threw
himself with extraordinary intensity into whatever work he had in hand,
and, to accomplish it, spared others scarcely more than he spared
himself. About the middle of August he issued a third proclamation to
the Canadians, declaring that as they had refused his offers of
protection and "had made such ungrateful returns in practising the most
unchristian barbarities against his troops on all occasions,