Landing
Bougainville, tasked with the defence of the large area between Cap Diamant and Cap Rouge, was upstream with his troops at Cap Rouge on the night of 12 September, and missed seeing numerous British ships moving downstream. A camp of approximately 100 militia led by Captain Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor, who had unsuccessfully faced the British four years previously at Fort Beauséjour, had been assigned to watch the narrow road at L'Anse-au-Foulon which followed a streambank, the Coulée Saint-Denis. On the night of 12 September and morning of 13 September, however, the camp may have contained as few as 40 men, as others were off harvesting. Vaudreuil and others had expressed their concern at the possibility of L'Anse-au-Foulon being vulnerable, but Montcalm dismissed them, saying 100 men would hold off the army until daylight, remarking, "It is not to be supposed that the enemies have wings so that they can in the same night cross the river, disembark, climb the obstructed acclivity, and scale the walls, for which last operation they would have to carry ladders."
Sentries did detect boats moving along the river that morning, but they were expecting a French supply convoy to pass that night—a plan that had been changed without Vergor being notified. When the boats, loaded with the first wave of British troops, were challenged, a French-speaking officer, either a Captain Fraser or Captain Donald McDonald of the 78th Fraser Highlanders, was able to answer the challenge in excellent French, allaying suspicion.
The boats, however, had drifted slightly off course: instead of landing at the base of the road, many soldiers found themselves at the base of a slope. A group of 24 volunteers led by Colonel William Howe with fixed bayonets were sent to clear the picket along the road, and climbed the slope, a manoeuvre that allowed them to come up behind Vergor's camp and capture it quickly. Wolfe followed an hour later when he could use an easy access road to climb to the plain. Thus, by the time the sun rose over the Plains of Abraham, Wolfe's army had a solid foothold at the top of the cliffs.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of The Plains Of Abraham
Famous quotes containing the word landing:
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)