eir waving tartans,
their terrible broadswords, and perhaps, also, their partially naked
bodies. They were indeed christened "the savages of Europe."

Not many days after Wolfe's victory the Highlanders marched into Quebec
with the victorious army. The French garrison was sent away to Europe,
the British fleet itself soon followed, and the conquerors, with General
Murray in command, settled down to face for the first time the rigours
of a winter at Quebec. The Highlanders suffered terribly. One suspects
that, in spite of their protests, the Highland costume was ill-suited to
meet the severity of the climate; and, in any case, the army was
ill-fed, ill-housed, and overworked. Malcolm Fraser kept a journal,[5]
but Nairne, the other future seigneur at Malbaie, the most methodical of
men, was less ready with the pen and appears to have made no chronicle
of those slow but momentous days. The bitter weather was the dread
enemy. Fraser tells how men on duty lost fingers and toes and some were
even deprived of speech and sensation in a few minutes through "the
incredible severity of the frost.... Our regiment in particular is in a
pitiful situation having no breeches. Nothing but the last necessity
obliged any man to go out of doors." Colonel Simon Fraser is, he adds,
doing his best to provide trousers. Pitying nuns observed the need and
soon busied themselves knitting long hose for the poor strangers. The
scurvy carried off a good many. In April, 1760, of 894 men in Fraser's
Highlanders not fewer than 580 were on the sick list and it was a wan
and woe-begone host that set itself grimly to the task of meeting the
assault on Quebec for which the French under Levis had been preparing
throughout the winter.

When it came on April 28th, 1760, the Highlanders were not wanting.
Instead of fighting behind Quebec's crazy walls Murray marched his men
out to the Plains of Abraham to meet the enemy in the open. On ground
half covered by snow, with here and there deep pools of water from the
heavy rain of the previous day, the two armies grappled in what was
sometimes a hand to hand conflict. Of the British one-third had come
from the hospital to take their places in the ranks. The proportion of
the Highlanders who did this was even greater; half of them rose on that
day from sick beds. It proved a dark day for Britain. Murray was
defeated, losing about one-third of his army on the field. Four of the
Highland officers were killed, twenty-