r I would scorn to deprive either of the illustrious dead of a
single laurel in the crown so nobly won, but the very generosity
of contemporary admiration has a tendency to work injustice towards
the survivors.

I know personally, for I afterwards had abundant opportunity of
judging, with what stoutness of heart did that admirable soldier,
General Murray, support his misgivings, when he saw the last English
frigate sail from Quebec in the late autumn of '59, bearing his
more fortunate comrades to the reward of their gallantry, while he
and his little garrison were left in a ruined town to face all the
chances of war, to which were added the unknown dangers of a dreaded
winter season.

On our side we made our headquarters in Montreal, where the military
were busy enough, while the officials and other unemployed
classes--priests, women, and school-boys--beguiled their inaction,
and cheated themselves into hopefulness by the most chimerical and
fantastical projects for the retaking of Quebec that ever deluded
the human mind.

The truth is, we were as miserable a lot of devils on both sides
as one could well imagine. In Quebec, the English were half-starved,
half-frozen, wholly without pay, and without reliable information.
In Montreal, we had enough to eat, we were as gay as the clergy,
M. de Vaudreuil, and our miserable plight would permit; we were
without pay, it is true, but to that we had been long accustomed;
but we had the most exact information as to what went on in Quebec,
thanks to friends within its walls, while our non-fighting orders,
ever at the height of certainty or the depth of despair, had so
befooled themselves with their infallible schemes of conquest, that
they looked forward to the spring campaign with a confidence almost
pitiable in the eyes of thinking men.

Early in April, M. de Levis gathered together his motley army; the
remnants of the brigades of Bearn La Reine, La Sarre, Royal
Roussillon, Berri, and La Marine, less than four thousand in all,
with about three thousand militia and volunteers, and, supported
by a few miserable cannon, marched forth to sit down before Quebec.

We were disappointed in our first plan of attack, but on the 28th
of April, 1760, we had the good fortune to meet Murray face to face
almost on the very ground where Wolfe and Montcalm had fought in
the previous September.

Murray's force was somewhat smaller than ours, but more than equalled
it in quality, being all