Quebec, << kwih BEHK, >> Battle of, in 1759, helped bring an end to the French empire in North America. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 gave almost all French territory in what is now eastern Canada and in the region east of the Mississippi River to Britain (now the United Kingdom).
About 2 million British colonists were living along the eastern seaboard of North America when the Seven Years’ War began in Europe in 1756 (see Seven Years’ War ). About 60,000 French lived in America, mostly in what is now eastern Canada. Skirmishes between the British and French occurred for two years before war broke out. The British wanted to expand westward, but a chain of French forts west of the Appalachian Mountains blocked their move. In 1755, the British began an unsuccessful campaign to expel the French from these forts. The French responded by encouraging their American Indian allies to raid the frontiers of the British colonies. In 1756, the Marquis de Montcalm took command of French troops and began a successful assault on Britain’s major American forts. He captured Fort Oswego in 1756 and Fort William Henry in 1757. In 1758, Montcalm overwhelmingly defeated a larger British force that had attacked Fort Ticonderoga.
In 1758, however, the British seized Louisbourg, a fortress on Cape Breton Island that was the center of French power in the area. The British assembled a huge fleet of ships and set sail for the city of Quebec in May 1759. The 250 ships carried 8,000 soldiers under the command of General James Wolfe.
Bombardment of Quebec.
The strongly fortified city stood on heights dominating the St. Lawrence River. Montcalm defended Quebec with about 14,000 soldiers. British troops landed on the Ile d’Orleans, 5 miles (8 kilometers) east of Quebec, in June. Other forces occupied Pointe Levis on the south bank. For nearly a month, the British and French exchanged fire, with no results. On July 31, Wolfe launched an attack on Beauport, on the north shore east of Quebec, opposite Pointe Levis. Under Montcalm and General Francois de Levis, French, French Canadian, and American Indian soldiers repelled the British forces.
From August to early September, Wolfe’s men burned the towns and farms beneath Quebec in an effort to force Montcalm to initiate an attack. However, Montcalm himself refused to engage in battle. With winter approaching, Wolfe decided to strike from the Plains of Abraham, a plateau west of the city. Starting on September 1, Wolfe’s soldiers moved upriver in naval vessels and on foot.
The attack on Quebec
began during the cloudy, calm night of Sept. 12-13, 1759. The tide bore British flatboats to the Anse au Foulon, a bay from which a path rose steeply to the Plains of Abraham. One boatload of men climbed silently and surprised an enemy guard. By dawn, about 4,500 British regulars had climbed the path and were ranged for battle. Montcalm had expected an attack at Beauport. He quickly moved about 4,000 troops to meet the enemy. They arrived around 10 o’clock that morning.
The French advanced too quickly and began firing at long range, with little effect. The British held their fire until the French were within 120 feet (37 meters). Then the British fired, reloaded, fired again, and charged with bayonet and sword. The French retreated in disorder. Wolfe was mortally wounded in the first shots. Montcalm, who had been trying to rally his men, was wounded about the same time. His soldiers took him back to Quebec, where he died the next day. The Battle of Quebec had lasted just 15 minutes. Jean-Baptiste Ramezay, the king’s lieutenant at Quebec, surrendered Quebec to General George Townshend on September 18.
The French nearly recaptured Quebec in April 1760, when they defeated the British at Sainte Foy, near the previous battle site. But France failed to regain Quebec because the last of its Atlantic fleet had been destroyed in 1759, at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on the French coast. Without naval reinforcements, the French retreated to Montreal, where they surrendered to the British in September 1760. The Treaty of Paris reduced all French possessions in North America to two small islands off the coast of Newfoundland—St.-Pierre and Miquelon. In 1908, the sites of the battles of Quebec and Sainte Foy became the National Battlefields Park.
