William Wood - The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolfe
to die, a hero to the very last.
In the thick of the short, fierce fire-fight the bagpipes began to skirl, the Highlanders dashed down their
muskets, drew their claymores, and gave a yell that might have been heard across the river. In a moment
every British bugle was sounding the 'Charge' and the whole red, living wall was rushing forward with a
roaring cheer.
But it charged without Wolfe. He had been mortally wounded just after giving the signal for those
famous volleys. Two officers sprang to his side. 'Hold me up!' he implored them, 'don't let my gallant
fellows see me fall!' With the help of a couple of men he was carried back to the far side of a little knoll
and seated on a grenadier's folded coat, while the grenadier who had taken it off ran over to a spring to
get some water. Wolfe knew at once that he was dying. But he did not yet know how the battle had gone.
His head had sunk on his breast, and his eyes were already glazing, when an officer on the knoll called
out, 'They run! They run! 'Egad, they give way everywhere!' Rousing himself, as if from sleep, Wolfe
asked, 'Who run?' - 'The French, sir!' - 'Then I die content!' - and, almost as he said it, he breathed his
last.
He was not buried on the field he won, nor even in the country that he conquered. All that was mortal of
him - his poor, sick, wounded body - was borne back across the sea, and carried in mourning triumph
through his native land. And there, in the family vault at Greenwich, near the school he had left for his
first war, half his short life ago, he was laid to rest on November 20 - at the very time when his own great
victory before Quebec was being confirmed by Hawke's magnificently daring attack on the French fleet
amid all the dangers of that wild night in Quiberon Bay.
Canada has none of his mortality. But could she have anything more sacred than the spot from which his
soaring spirit took its flight into immortal fame? And could this sacred spot be marked by any words
more winged than these:
HERE DIED
WOLFE
VICTORIOUS
CHAPTER VIII. EPILOGUE - THE LAST STAND
Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham proved decisive in the end; but it was not the last of the great
struggle for the Key of Canada.
After Wolfe had died on the field of battle, and Monckton had been disabled by his wounds, Townshend
took command, received the surrender of Quebec on the 18th, and waited till the French field army had
retired towards Montreal. Then he sailed home with Saunders, leaving Murray to hold what Wolfe had
won. Saunders left Lord Colville in charge of a strong squadron, with orders to wait at Halifax till the
spring.
Both French and British spent a terrible winter. The French had better shelter in Montreal than the British
had among the ruins of Quebec; and, being more accustomed to the rigours of the climate, they would
have suffered less from cold in any case. But their lot was, on the whole, the harder of the two; for food
was particularly bad and scarce in Montreal, where even horseflesh was thought a luxury. Both armies
were ravaged by disease to a most alarming extent. Of the eight thousand men with whom Murray began
that deadly winter not one-half were able to bear arms in the spring; and not one-half of those who did
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