Storm the Fortress

by Maxine Trottier

  It was General Wolfe. He wore a plain red uniform coat and breeches, clothing that would not draw attention to himself. A black tricorne sat upon his red hair. Around his left arm was tied a black mourning band. Was it for all our men who had died, I wondered. Or was it for the many more who would be killed this coming day?

  “I am not a deserter, sir. I was taken prisoner nearly three weeks ago when a party of us from Pembroke were —” But the general was already walking past me, and so I trotted along to keep up. Soldiers began to scramble from the boats. “From Pembroke, sir. At least one of us was killed and scalped.”

  “Curse the scalping,” he muttered. Then he said, “Make yourself useful then, sailor. There are soldiers to be brought in, ammunition and gear to be carried, and six-pounders to be dragged up.”

  “Cannons, sir?”

  “How else do you think we fight a battle, my boy? With stockings filled with mud?” He flicked a bit of lint from his immaculate cuff. “No, by my word, it is with the blood and sweat of loyal men. Are you loyal to your sovereign?”

  “I am, sir. Very loyal to his majesty.”

  “I knew it! Now make yourself useful. You will remember this glorious day all your life, lad.”

  Chapter 9

  September 13, 1759

  General Wolfe would never know how right he was.

  For the next while, the Royal Navy brought the army ashore. It sounds like a simple thing. It was not. First to land were the hundreds of light infantrymen who had accompanied General Wolfe. They were armed with muskets and seventy rounds of ammunition. Each soldier also had two days’ rations and canteens filled with water and rum. While more and more troops arrived, twenty-four volunteers and an officer scaled the cliff. They crept upward like insects on a wall, clutching at roots and branches. It was an amazing sight, one that left us sailors shaking our heads at the nerve it must be taking. I kept waiting for someone to come tumbling down and smash on the beach below. But the troops kept climbing.

  Until those men had secured the top, the assault could not begin in earnest. I stepped back near one of the boats, to better see their progress, and nearly bumped into one of the oarsmen.

  “Watch where you put your big feet,” he hissed. When he saw who owned the feet, he whispered, “William! As I live and breathe!” It was Baldish. “Boston Ben said you were in the town. Escaped, did you?”

  “Baldish! As I live and breathe, it is good to see you! Yes, I … managed to get away. But how is Pembroke? How are you?”

  “Still here, as you see. Less hair than ever. And you have missed a night of adventure, I will tell you that.”

  Pembroke, he explained, was safely at anchor, being too large to come in close to shore. But it had been some of her crew that had joined in to create the diversion at Beauport.

  Baldish laughed. “Old Montcalm thought the whole army was there. We can cause quite a disturbance when we put our minds to it. As you well know.”

  “That I do.”

  We heard gunfire and saw flashes from the barrels of muskets at the top of the cliff. War cries and whooping came next. Cannons boomed out from a nearby French battery in an attempt to sink and destroy our vessels. The cries of wounded men could soon be heard, but even that did not stop the boats from coming in and offloading more infantry. And it did not stop the army from taking the battery, either. Once that happened, the French guns were silent and our ships safe.

  I made myself useful, as I said I would, carrying powder, shot and supplies from the boats. The soldiers continued to come ashore, a river of red that now flowed up the Foulon Road to the heights. They would be having a far easier time of it than the men who had scaled the cliff. And there was also a stream of prisoners coming down, many of them wounded. I was glad to see that Vairon was not among them.

  Capitaine Vergor, though, was. Musket balls had passed through his hand and leg. Unconscious, he moaned as they carried him past. The tide was low now and the current not as speedy, so he and the other wounded were rowed across to where a field hospital had been set up in a church at Pointe Lévis. I joined in this task, taking up an oar and settling myself behind Baldish in one of the flat-bottomed boats. Our miserable passengers delivered, we stood by to receive more orders. Some of the boats would carry even more soldiers across. Ours, though, would ferry something rather different, and deliver it to General Wolfe.

  It was one of the six-pounders, a brass field gun complete with its carriage. Under the command of an artillery officer named Captain-Lieutenant Yorke, we wrestled it into the boat, then loaded in the equipment necessary for firing it. What a sight we must have been as we rowed back across the river, that gun riding in our midst.

  Once at the beach, we wrestled the heavy piece out of the boat. “Let us thank our stars that it is only this small gun, and not one of Pembroke’s,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “I would not much enjoy carrying Deadly Raker around.”

  “Tell me how small you think it is once we have it up there,” laughed Baldish. “What I would not do for a couple of strong horses right now! Six hundredweight if it is a pound.”

  The sky darkened as clouds rolled in, and it began to rain. But what was a little rain in light of what was happening? Some of us took up the gun’s drag ropes and began to haul it across the beach, Yorke calling out encouragement. Others pushed. There were hundreds of sailors milling around. Not many of them were smiling. Instead they cursed angrily and complained as they parted for us. They wanted to be in on the fighting. Who were these officers to deny them that right? There had been sounds of fighting up there for hours, some grumbled. The battle would be over, and not one sailor would have had a chance to draw blood.

  The six-pounder grew heavier with each step I took. The sky was lighter by now, but I barely saw anything for the sweat running into my eyes. None of us spoke except Captain-Lieutenant Yorke. Instead we grunted and gasped as we strained. My arms felt as if they would be torn from my shoulders. Sweat soaked my shirt. Someone near me cursed under his breath. It was like dragging Pembroke herself.

  But every hill has a top and so did this one. There at last, we hauled the weapon through the woods. I could hear muskets firing. Had the battle begun without us? We pulled the field piece along the road until we came out on the high plain where the battalions were already forming up at the spot General Wolfe had chosen. White smoke hung in the air.

  “Where are the French?” I wondered aloud.

  “Hiding in their town,” said Baldish. He cupped a hand behind his ear. “I can hear their knees knocking.”

  He was wrong. There may not have been soldiers present, but woods to the north of our troops were filled with Indians and militia, who were firing on our soldiers. Many of our men were stretched out on the ground, since it was safer to reload that way. The rest of the army stood motionless, waiting for their orders. There were six blocks of men that I could make out, thousands of soldiers. Grenadiers, regiments of foot, Royal Americans, Highlanders and the light infantry had been formed up in a sort of rectangle, with most of them arranged in two lines with about 35 feet between them. We were ordered to drag the six-pounder close to a hill near the south end of the line. The other gun was already in position at the north end. Our gun was happily received by the artillerymen, some of whom gave us dark looks. They were not as dark as they might have been, since General Wolfe was nearby, but still they made no sense to me.

  I raised an eyebrow at Baldish.

  “We have touched their precious gun,” he said under his breath. “We have dirtied it with our nasty sailors’ hands. Well, they shall see what a sailor is made of.” And with that he stepped into the ranks of the Louisbourg Grenadiers. Other sailors did the same.

  “Thank you, men,” the general called out. “Good job. Good job indeed. Now back to the beach with you.”

  “God bless your honour,” shouted Baldish. “Pray let us stay and see fair play between the English and the French.”

  General Wolfe smiled a little. �
��I do insist that you men go. You have done your work. Leave this to the army.” And he turned away to deal with the matter of the battle.

  Some of the sailors obeyed him, but Baldish worked his way farther in amongst the grenadiers.

  “He gave us an order,” I said, following his lead. “He is a general, after all. Be sensible, Baldish.”

  “Sensible? These soldiers should not have all the fighting to themselves. We will come in for a share some way or another.”

  “Well, perhaps that one has no sense,” laughed one of the grenadiers. He was a tall man, as they all were, his height made greater by the mitre hat he wore. “No sense, but enough courage to face this day!”

  I could not let myself be seen as a coward, so I joined Baldish. On the other hand, we were lacking certain important equipment. “We have no muskets or cutlasses,” I pointed out.

  “Give it time,” said the grenadier. “Our orders are not to fire until the enemy is forty yards from the points of our bayonets. There will be muskets on the ground for you shortly.”

  The muskets of dead or wounded men, was what he meant. I was turning that over in my head when French soldiers in their white uniforms began to appear on the hillside. They formed up in ranks, just as our army had done, while the militia and Indians kept up a ceaseless harassment of the regiments on the far left and right of us. At their head was a man on a horse. I knew exactly who it was. Montcalm.

  The French drummers began to relay his commands. Out they flowed from the general to his officers and to their men. Led by Montcalm, they began to move. General Wolfe positioned himself on the hill to the right of us. Suddenly the French began to run down the hillside. They raced through the trees. Some leaped over puddles. Others had to climb the fences that stretched here and there.

  “Fools,” said the grenadier with satisfaction. “Look at them. Montcalm’s army is falling apart.”

  And it seemed to be exactly that which was happening. Instead of neat lines of men, the French were advancing in three ragged groups. None of them was heading directly to our centre! All the while their Indian allies screamed, while the French saluted their king with Vive le roi! Vive le roi! We stood very still, and not a weapon was fired. That was not the case with the French, though. They paused more than a hundred yards from us, and began to shoot.

  “Idiots,” said the grenadier again. “Impossible to hit anyone at that range. And look at them. I wager no order at all has been given to fire.”

  Still, we waited. And to me these men did not seem like fools at all. What they were was something very dangerous, very deadly. They were not marching in straight lines the way British troops would be, but they were no less a threat for all that.

  It was then that a strange thing happened. They stopped and stood their ground some hundred yards away. Musket fire erupted from either side of us as the militia and their allies fought from the trees. Our batteries at Pointe Lévis bombarded the city and the cannons there answered back.

  For almost three minutes we all stood motionless, staring at each other. Then the French began to fire, but it was a scattered affair that seemed to have little effect. Two of our regiments began to advance and all two thousand men seemed to fire at once. With General Wolfe leading them, the grenadiers did the same, and so Baldish and I went with them. Soon I could not see Wolfe at all, since clouds of white smoke had begun to fill the air.

  Nothing I had experienced on Pembroke had prepared me for this. To watch a battle from the safety of the ship was one thing. To practise with small arms or to fire her guns was another. But to be in the midst of it while men screamed and fell? Blood spattered across my shirt as one man dropped silently to the ground, half of his head gone. I picked up his musket and ammunition.

  “Do not think. Just do your duty,” I said aloud. I ripped a paper cartridge apart with my teeth, primed and loaded the weapon. Then I fired. I lost count of how many times I did this or whether I hit anyone. I only know that it seemed to go on forever. The six-pounders boomed as their loads of grapeshot tore into the French. Battalion upon battalion fired until it sounded like one endless volley.

  Then the infantry charged and I ran with them. The ground shook with the firing of cannons and the pounding of our feet. Some men were screaming out battle cries, others were running with their teeth clenched in silence. Musket balls smashed onto men’s bodies and they fell to the ground, shrieking. I should have been afraid of death at that moment, but all I felt was the thrill of what I was doing.

  The smoke cleared a little, and I faltered. There was General Wolfe on the ground. Officers leaned over him. So, strangely, did a woman — presumably one of the camp followers who had attached herself to the British army. It seemed that she was willing to face battle. A bloody handkerchief was wound around Wolfe’s right wrist and his shirt was soaked through with gore.

  “They run! See how they run!” an officer shouted in excitement. It was true. The French army was retreating, and not in an orderly fashion. They ran for their very lives like panicked horses.

  “Who runs?” gasped Wolfe.

  “The enemy, sir. They give way everywhere.”

  General Wolfe hissed out an order. The enemy must be stopped from crossing the St. Charles River. He turned on his side, and for a moment I believe that his eyes met mine. “Now, God be praised,” he said weakly. “I will die in peace.” Then his gaze fixed upon something that no living person could see.

  The men who were with him began to weep as they carried his body from the field. I cannot fully explain it, but it was as though part of him stayed behind. The soldiers remained that inspired. Fixing our bayonets, we began to chase the retreating French. Highlanders were charging across the plain, waving their swords over their heads. Some took French prisoners, but others slashed at men as though they were cutting through wheat.

  As I watched them, a musket ball tore across the side of my head. Down I went, blood pouring into my eyes. I struggled to my knees. Through a haze of red I saw the Canadians and Indians. Some of them had fled as well, but many were fighting on from the shelter of the trees on the hill. Was Vairon there? The Highlanders, unable to drive their enemy from the bush, began to fall back. The battlefield with its terrible sounds began to fade and grow quiet. So this is what it is like to die, I thought, and then I did not think any more at all.

  * * *

  I felt someone take off my shoes, and then dig around in my pockets. My eyes popped open as I clapped a hand on the thief’s wrist.

  He screamed and dropped my shoes. “Beg pardon. I believed you to be dead.”

  “I am not.”

  “Gave me a start, you did!”

  “I would like to give you more than that.”

  But it was an idle threat, and besides, he was already moving on to a real corpse. I sat up, my head spinning, and pulled on my shoes. There were bodies everywhere, some moving, some still. The site reeked of blood, smoke and all the things that come out of a man when he dies. Looters were stripping the French dead of anything valuable. Weapons, belts, even the crosses many wore around their necks, were going into the pockets of these dogs. It was a sight that made me sick.

  “A scratch only, although you will carry a scar all your life.” A woman of middle years peered closely at my face. I had seen her only a short while ago. “You are not a soldier. Must be one of the mad sailors who insisted upon getting into the ranks. What ship are you with?”

  “Pembroke,” I said. Then, “You were with General Wolfe when he was wounded, madam.”

  “Mrs. Job, if you please. And yes, I was with him,” she said. Her voice was all business. “For all the good I could do. In all my years marching with this army I have not seen such a sad day as this. What a loss for us all. You, though, may be patched up. Down to the beach so that you may be taken across to Lévis.”

  “Where is he, madam?” I asked her.

  “General Wolfe? On Lowestoft. Where I will attend to him.” When I looked at her blankly she said in a m
ore gentle way, “His remains must be embalmed. He will be going home to England.” With a sharp nod she bustled away.

  I followed slowly. Not everyone was behaving as dishonourably as the looters. Some men had more honour. These fellows were helping to evacuate the wounded of both sides, using handbarrows. The victims moaned in pain as the barrows bumped them along. As for the dead, it seemed they would remain where they had fallen, at least for now. Unbelievably, some soldiers were eating their dinner in the midst of all this!

  I was passed by groups of sailors who were bringing up shovels, picks, saws and axes to where they were already clearing the brush from the hills. Of course, I thought as I approached a group of perhaps fifty soldiers, the siege will begin again, and this time it will be here at the city’s very gates.

  “Have an eye!” shouted an officer. “We are about to execute this scum.”

  The firing squad stood in a row, seven men whose faces were like stone. The crowd was equally grim, with none of the laughing and chatter that sometimes accompanied an execution. Seven muskets were already levelled at the condemned man. And that man was Blue Sam.

  “Ahoy!” Sam called out, and I realized he was speaking to me.

  Dozens of eyes turned on me in suspicion. If the condemned man was a deserter, perhaps I was as well.

  “No need for another court martial. This lad fought next to me a few hours ago.” It was the friendly grenadier. “A braver and more loyal tar you will find nowhere.”

  “You know the condemned?” the officer asked me. “Have you anything to say on his behalf?”

  What could I say? Sam was a turncoat, and in fighting against us had committed treason. Under the king’s law he must die, but he had been a fellow Pembroke. He had defended me against Ben’s bullying.

  “Blue Sam was once my shipmate,” I said loudly. “He chose to sail a different course than the rest of the Pembrokes.” King’s law or no, I paused and felt pity rush over me. “He was an excellent topman. The best.”