flats and across the ford.

The loss fell entirely upon the Grenadiers and Americans, and was, in
proportion to their number, enormous--four hundred and forty-three,
including one colonel, eight captains, twenty-one lieutenants, and
three ensigns, being killed, wounded, or missing. The blow to the
English was a severe one, and even Wolfe began to despair, and
meditated leaving a portion of his troops on Isle aux Coudres and
fortifying them there, and sailing home, with the rest, to prepare
another expedition in the following year.

In the middle of August, he issued a third proclamation to the
Canadians, declaring, as they had refused his offers of protection, and
had practised the most unchristian barbarity against his troops on all
occasions, he could no longer refrain, in justice to himself and his
army, in chastising them as they deserved. The barbarities consisted in
the frequent scalping and mutilating of sentinels, and men on outpost
duty, which were perpetrated alike by the Canadians and Indians.

Wolfe's object was twofold: first, to cause the militia to desert, and
secondly, to exhaust the colony. Accordingly the rangers, light
infantry and Highlanders were sent out, in all directions, to waste the
settlements wherever resistance was offered. Farm houses and villages
were laid in ashes, although the churches were generally spared.
Wolfe's orders were strict that women and children were to be treated
with honour.

"If any violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished
with death."

These orders were obeyed, and, except in one instance, none but armed
men, in the act of resistance, were killed.

Vaudreuil, in his despatches home, loudly denounced these barbarities;
but he himself was answerable for atrocities incomparably worse, and on
a far larger scale, for he had, for years, sent his savages, red and
white, along a frontier of 600 miles, to waste, burn, and murder at
will, and these, as he was perfectly aware, spared neither age nor sex.

Montcalm was not to be moved from his position by the sight of the
smoke of the burning villages. He would not risk the loss of all
Canada, for the sake of a few hundred farm houses.

Seeing the impossibility of a successful attack below the town, Wolfe
determined to attempt operations on a large scale above it.
Accordingly, with every fair wind and tide, ships and transports ran
the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec, and, covered by a hot fire
fr