Death or Victory

by Dan Snow

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  NOTES

  Prologue

  1. Doughty, A., ed., An Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America: For the Years 1757, 1758, 1759and 1760by Captain John Knox (3 vols., Toronto, 1914-16), I: 389-90.

  2. Knox, Journal, I: 386.

  3. General Orders in Wolfe’s Army, 14.

  4. Knox, Journal, I: 391.

  5. Wolfe to Pitt, 2 September 1759, Montmorency, PRO, CO 5/51.

  6. Quoted in I. McCulloch, Sons of the Mountain: The Highland Regiments in the French and Indian War, 1756-1767(2 vols., Toronto, 2006), I: 177.

  7. Extract from a Manuscript Journal Relating to the Operations before Quebec in 1759, Kept by Colonel Malcolm Fraser, the Lt of the 78th (Fraser’s Highlanders) and Serving in that Campaign (Literary and Historical Society of Quebec: Historical Documents, Second Series, Quebec, 1868), 4-5.

  8. Quoted in McCulloch, Sons of the Mountain, I: 178.

  9. ‘Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec by John Johnson’, in A. Doughty and G. Parmelee, eds., The Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (6 vols., Quebec, 1901), V: 80.

  10. Knox, Journal, I: 391.

  11. Ibid., I: 394.

  Chapter One: Assault on New France

  1. W. Wood, ed., The Logs of the Conquest of Canada (Toronto, 1909), 90.

  2. A. Doughty, ed., An Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America: For the Years 1757, 1758, 1759and 1760by Captain John Knox (3 vols., Toronto, 1914-16), I: 362.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Newcastle to Albemarle, 5 September 1754, in T. C. Pease, ed., Anglo-French Boundary Disputes in the West, 1749-1763 (Springfield, IL, 1936), 50-2.

  5. Braddock quoted in F. Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years War in North America, 1754-1766(New York, 2001), 95.

  6. T. Clayton, Tars (London, 2007), 99.

  7. R. Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War 1757-1762(Cambridge, 1985), 114-16.

  8. Middleton, The Bells of Victory, 128.

  9. Minutes of the meeting at Lord Anson’s house, 19 February 1759, in Middleton, The Bells of Victory, 108

  10. ‘The Journal of Captain John Montresor’, in A. Doughty and G. Parmelee, eds., The Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (6 vols., Quebec, 1901), IV: 307.

  11. Dictionary of Canadian Biography online see: http://www. biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=35452andquery=DURELL

  12. Durell to Admiralty, 19 March 1759, Halifax harbour on the Princess Amelia, in C. H. Little, ed., Despatches of Rear Admiral Philip Durell (Halifax, NS, 1958), 7.

  13. Dictionary of Canadian Biography online see: http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=35759andquery=joh n%20AND%20rous

  14. ‘Letter of James Gibson to Governor Lawrence’, Basin of Quebec, 1 August 1759, in Doughty and Parmelee, Siege of Quebec, V: 61-2.

  15. ‘Extract of a Letter from an Officer in Major General Wolfe’s Army, Island of Orleans, 10th August 1759’, in S. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748-65: Select
ed Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (New York, 1936), 433.

  16. Clevland to Holburne, 1 January 1759, Adm 2/524, in Middleton, The Bells of Victory, 105.

  17. Saunders to Pitt, 22 January 1759, PRO, CO 5/51 fol. 5.

  18. Middleton, The Bells of Victory, 106.

  19. Admiralty to Saunders, 9 January 1759, Adm 2/82; for the rough figures of British and French ships of the line see N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean (London, 2006), 608.

  20. A. Brice, The Grand Gazetteer: or, Topographic Dictionary, Both General and Special, and Ancient as Well as Modern (Exeter, 1759), 1058, in T. Clayton, Tars (London, 2007), 184.

  21. ‘Brigadier Townshend’s Journal of the Voyage to America and Campaign against Quebec, 1759’, in Doughty and Parmelee, Siege of Quebec, V: 225.

  22. C. H. Little, ed., Despatches of Vice Admiral Saunders (Halifax, NS, 1958), 4.

  23. A note on the colours associated with British admirals: in the seventeenth century the fleet fought as one long line in battle and was divided for command and control into three sections: the van, which flew the white ensign, the centre which flew the red, and the rear which flew the blue. The overall commander was in the centre and so became the ‘Admiral of the Red’; the Vice Admiral of the Red commanded the front of the centre squadron and was, therefore, the senior Vice Admiral, and the Rear Admiral of the Red commanded the rear of the centre and was the senior Rear Admiral. The Admiral of the White commanded the van, the Vice Admiral of the White commanded the very front of the van, and the Rear Admiral of the White commanded the rear of the van. The rear had an Admiral, Vice Admiral, and Rear Admiral of the Blue who were the respective juniors of their ranks. At Quebec, Saunders was Vice Admiral of the Blue, i.e. the most junior Vice Admiral in the fleet, Holmes was a Rear Admiral of the White and Durell, Rear Admiral of the Red. By the Seven Years War the titles had lost their real meanings as the fleets grew in size and never fought as one giant formation. They remained only a mark of seniority.

  24. Little, Despatches of Vice Admiral Saunders, 5.