1759J Wolfe takes the command against Quebec. 137 and physical odds that seemed insuperable. Amherst was to resume the uncompleted task of driving the French from Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain and if possible of fighting his way to Montreal, forming with the attack on Quebec by a fleet and army a combined movement, which if successful would place Canada at his feet. A third army under Prideaux, advancing up the Mohawk route, was to clear Lake Ontario and seize Niagara, where a large French post barred the way to Lake Erie and the western trade. Wolfe had gone home after Louisbourg, full of honours; not however to display them but to try to patch up his wretched constitution at Bath, against such demands as Pitt, in the coming season, might make on his services. Here, not without murmurs from the jobbers and over- looked incapables, he received his appointment to the command against Quebec. Louisbourg was the rendezvous for the army placed under his orders, which consisted of something under 9000 men. He was still to remain only a colonel with temporary rank of major-general, and was just thirty-two. His brigadiers were Monkton, Murray and Townshend, all well-tried officers, though the appointment of the last-named was to some extent a concession to rank and interest. The troops were com- posed of the 15th, 43rd, 58th, 28th, 47th, 35th, 48th regiments, and the 78th (Highlanders) with two battalions of the 60th or Royal Americans, a corps of light infantry, three companies of picked Grena- diers and six companies of Colonials. The French had always regarded the upper St Lawrence as unnavig- able for large war-ships. Bougainville had declared that 4000 men could hold Quebec against all comers, and that the English would be mad to attempt it. He had this winter been sent to France to beg for reinforcements, and had returned just in time to warn Montcalm that an English fleet and army were actually on the sea destined for Quebec. Such was that fine soldier's energy that, when Wolfe and his men, partly by the assistance of compulsory pilotage and partly by daring and skilful English seamanship, found themselves floating in the vast basin of Quebec, they beheld not four thousand but four times four thousand foes as strongly entrenched as nature and skill could make them. Montcalm, despairing of help from France, had collected every man that could be spared from the prospective defence of Montreal against Amherst, and from the western posts, to hold the city of Quebec, which clings to the slopes and crown of a lofty promontory between the main river and its confluent the St Charles. The St Lawrence here suddenly narrows to less than a mile in width, and theoretically hostile ships could not pass its batteries. Above the city for several miles almost precipitous cliffs drop into the water from the north shore, practically securing it from all attack upon that side. Below the city, and beyond the confluence of the St Charles, a high ridge follows the shore line for some six miles to where the Montmorency plunging down it in broad CH. IV.
