e Vaudreuil would hardly give them a week.

Meanwhile, no precaution was spared. The force under Bougainville above
Quebec was raised to three thousand men.[757] He was ordered to watch
the shore as far as Jacques-Cartier, and follow with his main body every
movement of Holmes's squadron. There was little fear for the heights
near the town; they were thought inaccessible.[758] Even Montcalm
believed them safe, and had expressed himself to that effect some time
before. "We need not suppose," he wrote to Vaudreuil, "that the enemy
have wings;" and again, speaking of the very place where Wolfe
afterwards landed, "I swear to you that a hundred men posted there would
stop their whole army."[759] He was right. A hundred watchful and
determined men could have held the position long enough for
reinforcements to come up.

[Footnote 757: _Journal du Siege_ (Bibliotheque de Hartwell). _Journal
tenu a l'Armee, etc. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct._ 1759.]

[Footnote 758: Pontbriand, _Jugement impartial._]

[Footnote 759: _Montcalm a Vaudreuil, 27 Juillet. Ibid., 29 Juillet,
1759_.] The hundred men were there. Captain de Vergor, of the colony
troops, commanded them, and reinforcements were within his call; for the
battalion of Guienne had been ordered to encamp close at hand on the
Plains of Abraham.[760] Vergor's post, called Anse du Foulon, was a mile
and a half from Quebec. A little beyond it, by the brink of the cliffs,
was another post, called Samos, held by seventy men with four cannon;
and, beyond this again, the heights of Sillery were guarded by a hundred
and thirty men, also with cannon.[761] These were outposts of
Bougainville, whose headquarters were at Cap-Rouge, six miles above
Sillery, and whose troops were in continual movement along the
intervening shore. Thus all was vigilance; for while the French were
strong in the hope of speedy delivery, they felt that there was no
safety till the tents of the invader had vanished from their shores and
his ships from their river. "What we knew," says one of them, "of the
character of M. Wolfe, that impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior,
prepared us for a last attack before he left us."

[Footnote 760: Foligny, _Journal memoratif. Journal tenu a l'Armee_,
etc.]

[Footnote 761: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct._ 1759.]

Wolfe had been very ill on the evening of the fourth. The troops knew
it, and their spirits sank; but, after a night of torment, he grew
better, and was soon am