Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759): Wolfe Takes Quebec

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, fought on 13 September 1759 just outside the walls of Quebec, was the decisive battle of the British campaign to conquer New France. After a daring night landing, General James Wolfe’s army defeated the French under the Marquis de Montcalm in a clash that lasted less than an hour. Both commanders were mortally wounded, Quebec surrendered five days later, and within a year French rule in Canada was over.

Background: the road to Quebec

The battle was part of the French and Indian War, the North American theatre of the global Seven Years’ War. After years of setbacks, Britain under the war minister William Pitt poured troops and ships into North America. The capture of the fortress of Louisbourg in 1758, described in Siege of Louisbourg, opened the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Royal Navy.

Quebec, founded by Samuel de Champlain in 1608 and the capital of New France, was the obvious next target. The city sat on a high rock above the St. Lawrence River, protected by cliffs on the river side and by walls on the landward side. Whoever held it controlled the river route into the heart of French North America.

The siege of the summer of 1759

In June 1759 a fleet of more than 150 ships under Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders carried Wolfe’s army of roughly 8,500 to 9,000 soldiers up the St. Lawrence, a remarkable feat of navigation through difficult waters. Wolfe was only 32, but he had made his name at Louisbourg. His three brigadiers were Robert Monckton, George Townshend and James Murray.

Montcalm, the French field commander, and the governor-general, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, had gathered somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 men, most of them Canadian militia, along with French regulars, colonial troops and Indigenous allies. Their strategy was defensive: hold the long line of entrenchments along the Beauport shore east of the city and wait for the autumn to force the British fleet to leave.

From mid-July British batteries at Pointe-Lévis, across the river, bombarded Quebec and destroyed much of the Lower Town. On 31 July Wolfe attacked the Beauport lines near the Montmorency Falls and was repulsed with about 440 casualties. Through August his troops burned farms and villages along the river, but the French army would not come out to fight. By early September Wolfe was ill, his army was tired, and time was running out.

The night landing at the Anse au Foulon

Wolfe and his brigadiers finally decided to land upstream of the city, where the French did not expect a major attack. On the night of 12 to 13 September 1759 boats drifted down the river on the ebb tide to a small cove called the Anse au Foulon, about 3 kilometres west of the city walls. According to several accounts, a French-speaking officer answered the challenge of a sentry, who took the boats for an expected French supply convoy.

Light infantry led by Lieutenant Colonel William Howe scrambled up a steep wooded path and overpowered the small post at the top, commanded by Captain Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor. Through the early hours more boats landed more men, and by about 8 o’clock in the morning some 4,400 to 4,800 British soldiers were drawn up on the open ground of the plateau, the Plains of Abraham, facing the city.

Montcalm could have waited for reinforcements. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville commanded about 3,000 men upstream near Cap-Rouge. Instead, fearing that the British would dig in and cut the city off from its supplies, Montcalm decided to attack at once with the troops he had at hand, a force of roughly the same size as Wolfe’s.

The battle

At about 10 o’clock the French advanced in three columns. Their lines lost cohesion as regulars and militia moved at different paces, and many militiamen fired early and then dropped to reload. The British, many of them loading two musket balls, held their fire until the French were close, often reported as about 40 metres away.

The British volleys broke the French attack within minutes. The French army fell back in disorder towards the city and the bridge over the St. Charles River, pursued by Highlanders of the 78th Regiment and other troops. Canadian militia and Indigenous fighters firing from woods on the flanks covered much of the retreat and inflicted many of the British casualties.

Wolfe, leading from the front on the right of the line, was hit in the wrist and then twice in the body. He died on the field soon after being told that the French were running. Montcalm was struck during the retreat, was helped back into the city on horseback, and died early on 14 September. He was buried in the chapel of the Ursuline convent.

Key people

• James Wolfe (1727–1759), the young British commander whose gamble on the landing above the cliffs succeeded at the cost of his life.
• Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm (1712–1759), the French general who had won earlier victories at Oswego, Fort William Henry and Carillon (Ticonderoga).
• Charles Saunders (c. 1715–1775), the admiral whose fleet made the whole campaign possible.
• William Howe (1729–1814), who led the climb from the Anse au Foulon and later commanded British forces in the American Revolutionary War.
• Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil (1698–1778), the Canadian-born governor-general, who often disagreed with Montcalm over strategy.

Consequences

Vaudreuil withdrew the remaining French army to the west, leaving a small garrison in the city. On 18 September 1759 its commander, Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay, signed the capitulation of Quebec. Murray stayed with a British garrison through a harsh winter in which many of his soldiers died of scurvy and other illness.

The war in Canada was not yet over. On 28 April 1760 the new French commander, the Chevalier de Lévis, defeated Murray at the Battle of Sainte-Foy, fought on almost the same ground, and besieged Quebec. In May British warships arrived first up the river, and Lévis had to withdraw. Surrounded by three British armies, Vaudreuil surrendered Montreal and all of New France on 8 September 1760. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 confirmed Canada as British.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1759, 26–27 June: The British fleet anchors off the Île d’Orléans, below Quebec.
• 1759, 12 July: British batteries at Pointe-Lévis begin bombarding the city.
• 1759, 31 July: Wolfe’s attack at Montmorency is repulsed.
• 1759, 13 September: The British land at the Anse au Foulon and win the battle; Wolfe is killed.
• 1759, 14 September: Montcalm dies of his wounds.
• 1759, 18 September: Quebec surrenders.
• 1760, 28 April: The French win the Battle of Sainte-Foy.
• 1760, 8 September: Montreal capitulates and New France passes to Britain.

Legacy and memory

Wolfe became a British national hero almost overnight. Benjamin West’s painting The Death of General Wolfe (1770) turned his death into a grand, carefully staged scene, with figures who were not actually present at his side. A well-known story says that Wolfe recited Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” in the boat on the night of the landing; it rests on a later recollection and many historians treat it with caution.

In French Canada, the battle became known as the moment of the “Conquest”, remembered as a loss that shaped Quebec’s identity for centuries. A single monument in Quebec City honours both Wolfe and Montcalm. The battlefield became a national park in 1908, managed by the National Battlefields Commission. Plans for a re-enactment for the 250th anniversary in 2009 were cancelled after controversy, a sign that the battle still carries strong feelings.

Why it matters

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham decided the fate of New France, the French empire in North America that had begun with the founding of Quebec. It led to British rule over Canada and its large French-speaking population, and by removing the French threat it also loosened the ties between Britain and its thirteen American colonies, setting the stage for the conflicts of the 1760s and 1770s.