Death or Victory

by Dan Snow

  The British soldiers snatched a cartridge from their boxes and tore the end off with their teeth. There was the bitter taste of gunpowder as some inevitably tipped onto the tongue. The hydrosorbic black powder immediately absorbed any moisture in their mouths and within a couple of shots they were utterly parched. They tapped a little of the powder into the flash pan and brought down the frizzen to keep it there. Then the rest of the powder was poured into the muzzle, followed by the ball and then the paper cartridge to act as a wadding. Then there was a rasping sound as the ramrods were pulled out of their storage tube on the underside of the musket and plunged into the barrel to ensure that the powder was all collected at the very bottom and the ball was held snugly on top of it by the wadding. Most of the men had steel ramrods which required just one good downward thrust. Those unlucky enough to still be using wooden ramrods had to give it a couple of plunges. Too vigorous with the ramming, though, and the charge would fail to ignite.

  The entire process was minutely controlled by a complex series of moves, all of them hammered into the men by the hours of training on the drill square and the firing range. Well-trained troops were capable of firing a shot every twenty seconds. The men were supposed to fire according to a preordained plan which meant that portions of the line would fire one after the other in a ripple that ensured that there were always some musket balls being sent towards the enemy. Traditionally the British army had practised ‘platooning’ whereby the regimental battle line was divided into platoons before the start of battle. Each platoon was assigned to a first, second, or third firing. This system worked very well in theory or on the parade grounds of London but was far too complicated for the field. Wolfe, among other young officers, introduced the Prussian method to the British army. He had once called platooning an ‘impracticable chequer’ and his preferred method was to use the existing companies as the fire unit and each one simply fired in turn from left to right or vice versa.82

  In battle most observers agreed that all this discussion on firing was totally irrelevant. Once the shooting started men blazed away until they were told to stop. One veteran of Dettingen wrote that ‘they were under no command by way of Hyde Park firing, but the whole three ranks made a running fire of their own accord, at the same time with great judgement and skill, stooping as low as they could, making almost every ball take place’. This was not unusual, the British general, Lord Stair, had ‘seen many a battle, and never saw the infantry engage in any other manner’.83

  After the first volley the next followed within twenty seconds. The British troops reloaded as quickly as they could. Ramrods were pushed into the ground for ease of use or simply abandoned altogether. Some men dropped the powder and ball into the barrel and hit the butt on the ground to force it down. This reduced the speed of the round when it was fired but the French were so close that it would still be travelling fast enough. This method of loading also lessened the kick of the musket and did less damage to the shoulders of the men, which by the end of several discharges would normally be black and blue with bruising.

  Experienced officers would have tried to steady their men. Wolfe had told the 20th Regiment, when he had commanded it before the war, that ‘there is no necessity for firing very fast; a cool well-levelled fire, with the pieces carefully loaded, is much more destructive and formidable than the quickest fire in confusion’.84 Many troops, though, just ignored this. Officers were hard to hear over the din of battle and the men would have been entirely absorbed in their own loading and firing. Flints would shatter every twenty or more shots. The British army’s flints all came from Brandon in Suffolk and when one broke the men would reach into their pocket or pouch and pull out this little piece of England and go through the fiddly process of inserting it into the jaws of the cock. There were other running repairs that the men might be forced to make. The residue of the burnt powder clogged up the weapon. Somewhere on the men’s equipment hung a steel pricker and a tiny brush on a chain. Soldiers used these to clear the charred mess from around the touch-hole to allow the flames from the pan to ignite the powder in the barrel.

  After a couple of rounds the men’s faces were smeared with blackened powder, their shoulders ached, their ears rang, and the smoke around them was totally opaque. They fired so fast that ‘the smell of gun-powder became nauseous’ according to one witness.85 Only yards away the French were taking terrible punishment. Hundreds of musket balls flayed the column from its front, and obliquely from the British regiments to the right and left. Canister shot from the two cannon knocked down swathes of men. Johnson wrote that ‘we poured in such a discharge…which we continued, with such regular briskness, as was visible to all, by the good effect it produced; their seeming resolution was soon quelled, and their courage cooled’.86 Robert MacPherson of the 78th Highland Regiment wrote that the musketry had been at ‘so good a level and to such purpose the body of enemy were put in great confusion by the slaughter made among them, both from the front and flank’. After only ‘four or five discharges, the enemy fire slackened, and halted’.87

  The French attack stalled. All command and control broke down as the roar of the British volleys drowned out the shouts of their officers. If, indeed, there were any. Many of their officers had been the first to fall. The commander of the Guyenne, Louis Restoineau de Fontbonne, was killed. The commander of La Sarre, and Montcalm’s second in command, Brigadier âtienne-Guillaume de Senezergues fell. Malartic had a lucky escape when his horse was shot dead under him. Many junior officers and NCOs followed their commanders to the grave. The grenadiers of each battalion, the steadiest men, who were attached to Bougainville’s force, were sorely missed. Some of the Frenchmen attempted to return the fire through the blanket of smoke; others stumbled wildly away from the firing. They lunged wildly into the troops following on behind, spreading panic. Without leadership, without the backbone of veteran troops to rally around, the French force fell apart with every British discharge. A sergeant major in the Louisbourg Grenadiers wrote that ‘a terrible slaughter ensued from the quick fire of our field pieces and musketry’.88 Knox said it was so potent ‘that better troops than we encountered could not possibly withstand it’.89 In just a few minutes Montcalm’s army broke, the well-ordered battalions now just a mass of fleeing, terrified men, shoving, running, and trying to save their own skins.

  Wolfe had watched the thundering British volleys from the right wing. John Johnson, who fought with his 58th Regiment over on the left wing, heard that Wolfe was ‘always where the attack was hottest’, sometimes standing with the Louisbourg Grenadiers and occasionally walking over to the neighbouring Bragg’s 28th Regiment. Johnson reports that ‘he was often in imminent danger’ but he would not be prevailed on to take more care over his own safety.90

  He had always been brave to a fault. He had been miraculously unscathed at Montmorency, he had survived skirmishes in the woods that had killed and injured men only feet away from him, and that morning he had ignored the Canadian sharpshooters in the bushes beside his position. Now Wolfe’s luck ran out. First a glancing blow struck him on the wrist. His ‘Family Journal’ notes that ‘he took no notice of’ this wound. He simply bound it up with a handkerchief. Next a bullet grazed his stomach, again he ignored the pain. But not even the coolest, most dispassionate Englishman could soldier on through the next wound. Two other musket balls, or possibly one larger ball from a canister, struck him ‘in his body’.91

  Command in the eighteenth century was a dangerous job. Braddock, Howe, and Prideaux had already fallen in North America at the head of armies or detachments. Montcalm’s predecessor, Dieskau, had been horribly mangled on the field of battle. In Europe von Browne and von Schwerin, senior commanders of the Austrian and Prussian forces respectively at the battle of Prague in 1757, were both killed. How Frederick the Great survived his string of battles is something of a mystery. Command of an army meant visible leadership, sharing the dangers of the men in the front line. In this pre-industrial warfare the presence o
f a commander at the critical melee, or his intervention with fresh, reserve troops at a decisive moment, could swing the outcome of a battle. The detached overview of later generals was less valuable than dramatic appearances in the thick of the fighting. These leaders were ostentatious with their lack of care for their own persons. Too often they paid an awful price for glory.

  Wolfe stumbled to the rear. After the battle Knox tells that many men ‘from a vanity of talking, claimed the honour of being his supporters’. Wolfe was, in fact, carried behind the lines by James Henderson, a volunteer, and Lieutenant Henry Browne and an unnamed private soldier, both from the Louisbourg Grenadiers. They were helped by an artilleryman whose name Knox did not recollect; had he done so he would have ‘cheerfully recorded’ it.92 This little group was a distinctly less glittering assembly of the great and the good which surrounds Wolfe’s broken but beatific body in the Benjamin West painting, one of the classics of British imperial iconography. There were no senior officers present, certainly no Native Americans and no massive flag patriotically draped as a backdrop and a reminder of the cause for which he was spilling his blood.

  He remained conscious for some time. As he was hauled past Otway’s 35th who were still watching the right flank of the army, set back from the main battle line, he ‘waved his hat’ at them, telling them according to his ‘Family Journal’ to ‘move up and flank the enemy’.93 Then his helpers laid him on the ground; the wound in his breast was gushing blood and the front of his shirt was a deep red. They tried to staunch the flow but the haemorrhaging continued. He waved away offers of attention from a surgeon, saying ‘it is needless; it is all over with me’. When he noticed that Henderson was wounded he begged him to see to his own injury. He drifted in and out of consciousness but remained lucid. When he heard his companions talking about the French breaking and running he snapped with ‘great earnestness, like a person roused from sleep’, ‘Who runs?’ One of the men replied, ‘The enemy, Sir; Egad they give way every-where.’ All the sources agree that despite the pain and his slipping grasp on life a broad smile broke out across Wolfe’s face. Ever the soldier, he now gave his last order. ‘Go one of you my lads, to Colonel Burton—; tell him to march Webb’s regiment with all speed down to Charles’s River, to cut off the retreat of the fugitives from the bridge.’ Then, with only seconds of his life remaining, he turned on his side and said, ‘Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.’ He expired with the smile fixed on his face.94

  The army was leaderless. Monckton, the second in command, who should have taken over, was badly injured at almost the same time as Wolfe fell. He had been by Lascelles’ 47th Regiment, which had faced the central French column. Townshend wrote in his journal that the wound was ‘in his right breast, by a ball that went through part of his lungs, and which was cut out under the blade bone of his shoulder, just as the French were giving way’.95 He was taken to the Lowestoft for medical attention. Command now devolved to Townshend although it was some time before that became clear to anyone.

  Along the line of battle the British soldiers peered into the murk. Some accounts suggest that the French were broken after just over a minute of crashing musket volleys. Malcolm Fraser remembered it as ‘continuing very hot for about six, or (some say) eight minutes’.96 Others suggest that ‘the fire continued very hot indeed for about ten minutes when the French and the Canadians turned tail’.97 The French may well have proved more tenacious along some parts of the line than others, but certainly after no more than ten minutes as the smoke cleared the British saw the fleeing backs of their enemy. With ‘the smoke of the powder vanishing’ Fraser watched ‘the main body of the Enemy retreating in great confusion towards the town, and the rest towards the river St Charles’.98

  Without waiting for instruction the commanders of the front line battalions prepared to chase down the enemy. Each of them roared, ‘Fix Bayonets!’ The men’s right arms crossed their bodies to seize a seventeen-inch-long, thin isosceles triangle of steel. The edges of these bayonets were sharpened to such a fine degree that men could use them to shave. With a smart action the hollow ring at the base of the bayonet was thrust over the muzzle of the musket and then slotted down and turned snugly to fix it in position. The next command was ‘Charge Your Bayonet!’ At this the men’s right feet stepped back and hundreds of muskets, now tipped with a bayonet, were brought back onto the horizontal, the right hand gripping the stock behind the trigger tightly at the level of their waists, their knuckles resting on the top of the hip bone.

  When this was complete the officers led their men forward in pursuit of the enemy. At this point the men were finally allowed to roar a battle cry. Wolfe had written years before that ‘when they are upon a point of rushing upon the enemy, the battalion may give a warlike shout and run in’.99 Lascelles’ 47th was the first to move off but was quickly overtaken by the Highlanders of the 78th who seem to have dispensed with their bayonet drills and reverted to a much older and more favoured weapon: the broadsword.

  With a Gaelic scream the Highlanders drew their ancestral weapon and tore after the French. One eyewitness wrote that ‘450 Highlanders were let loose upon them’; as they caught them they ‘made terrible havoc among the poor devils…When these took their broadswords, my god! What a havoc they made! They drove everything before them and walls could not resist their fury—those breechless fellows are an honour to their country.’ The author was particularly impressed that they were not motivated by financial incentive, ‘praise and approbation the only reward (except half victuals and clothes) that a highlander demands, being prepossessed naturally with a kind of martial honour’.100 Holmes agreed that the pursuit was ‘carnage’ as the Highlanders ‘with their broad swords did great execution’.101 Their chaplain reported to a fellow Scot that ‘they rushed in sword in hand and some other regiments with bayonets. In a moment the rout was general. Your countrymen, led on by Brigadier Murray, were interspersed amongst the thick of them…cutting and slashing every where about them.’102

  Sergeant James Thompson was in the thick of it. He reported that ‘If the French gave themselves quietly up, they had no harm done to them. But Faith! If they tried to outrun a Hielandmon [Highlander], they stood but a bad chance, for Whash! went the broadsword.’ He looked around and ‘the casualties lay on the field as thick as a flock of sheep and just as they had fallen, for the main body had been completely routed off the ground and had no opportunity of carrying away their dead and wounded’. One particular image seems to have stuck in his head, ‘it was horrid to see the effect of blood and dust on their white coats’.103

  John Johnson wrote that ‘every man exerted himself, as if possessed with an extraordinary spirit, for the honour of old England, calling out aloud to one another, “Death or Victory!”’ They chased the French with ‘irresistible fury’.104 Soon stories circulated about the deeds of certain berserk Highlanders, tales reminiscent of a distant past. One told of Ewan Cameron who killed nine men before losing his sword arm to a cannonball, and then picked up a bayonet and wounded several more before a bullet to the throat ended his rampage. The Highlander myth was born. They won a reputation during that charge that has endured beyond the existence of the true Highlander himself. It was the first time the Highlanders were portrayed in the army and in the British press with pride as the shock troops of empire. Until then the Highlander had been a deeply malignant, savage presence in the north of the island. Uncontrollable and capable, if properly mobilized, of threatening the very existence of the British state. On the Plains of Abraham they roared into the popular consciousness and established themselves as the elite of the British army. From Canada in 1759 to the Napoleonic Wars, the nineteenth-century wars of Empire, the global conflicts of the twentieth century and up to the craggy slopes of Tumbledown in the Falklands the Highland units advanced to the noise of their pipes and never surrendered the renown their forebears had won before the walls of Quebec.

  Malcolm Fraser kept a cool enough head to realize that
attacking with cold steel looked impressive but was an inefficient way of routing the enemy. The Highland charge, he wrote, ‘I dare say increased their panic but saved many of their lives, whereas if the artillery had been allowed to play, and the army advanced regularly there would have been more of the enemy killed and wounded’. Even so, ‘in advancing we passed over a great many dead and wounded, (French regulars mostly) lying in front of our regiment’. He, like all the other officers who left accounts, was generous in the praise of his men. ‘To do them justice,’ he wrote of the Highlanders, they ‘behaved extremely well all day, as did the whole of our army.’105

  Looking at the aftermath of the slaughter one eyewitness was appalled at the carnage. The Highlanders had ‘made a havoc not to be described…the bullet and bayonet are decent deaths, compared with the execution of their swords’. He stumbled across one corpse that had had its head removed with one blow from a broadsword.106 Lieutenant Colonel Murray wrote to his wife that ‘there was no restraining the men’. Several of his grenadiers returned from the charge with bayonets ‘bent, and their muzzles dipped in gore’.107

  As the French regulars fled off the battlefield, the Canadian troops, whom Montcalm and the other regular officers so despised, fought a gallant rearguard action that ironically saved King Louis’ honour. Anchored in the bushes and houses around the north side of the battlefield the Canadians attacked the Highlanders and other pursuing troops and inflicted serious casualties, forcing them to back off and regroup. One French officer noted that ‘the rout was total only among the Regulars; the Canadians accustomed to fall back Indian fashion (and like the ancient Parthians) and to turn afterwards on the enemy with more confidence than before, rallied in some places, and under cover of the brushwood, by which they were surrounded, forced divers corps to give way’. The Native Americans had been even more careful with their own skins: ‘the Indians took scarcely any part in this affair. They kept themselves, for the most part at a distance, until the success of the battle should decide what part they should take. It is well known that they never face an enemy in open field.’108 What they had just witnessed of European warfare was unlikely to have convinced them that their approach was mistaken.