Montcalm's Poor Decision

Some Thoughts on the Fall of Quebec

28 October 2023

The turning point in the Seven Years’ War was the fall of Quebec on 13 September 1759. The pivot upon which that turn took place was the Marquis de Montcalm’s decision to attack the British at the Plains of Abraham. That battle was the culmination of a three-month siege against the capital of New France led by British General James Wolf. During the night of 12 September, Wolfe disembarked his few thousand troops from their ships at l’Anse-au-Foulon, approximately five kilometres upriver from the city of Quebec. They spent that night scaling the steep cliff upon which the fortified city was perched. On the morning of 13 September, Wolf and his men formed a battle line outside the walls of Quebec. It was then that Montcalm made his fateful decision.

The defending force of French regular soldiers and Canadian guerilla fighters had been defeating, and often embarrassing, the British troops for over two years by this time. However, most of that success was attributable to the Native and French Canadians and their tactic known as the “Little War,” a type of skirmish that sought to harass and degrade the enemy through raids and ambushes conducted from inside dense, bushy terrain. The Canadian militias avoided decisive engagement with the British troops on the open fields of battle, the style of fighting that the British and French armies engaged in back in Europe. However, though the Little War was the method of fighting preferred by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the Canadian-born Governor of New France, Montcalm disapproved of the Canadians’ inglorious form of warfare and only incorporated it into his manoeuvre plan begrudgingly.

On the morning of 13 September, Montcalm’s troops outnumbered their British attackers, but most of Montcalm’s troops were proficient at skirmishing, not line battle. Had he waited just a few more hours, Montcalm likely would have had re-enforcements who were more experienced at line tactics. However, Montcalm chose to forego the skirmishing tactics of the Canadians and not to wait for the re-enforcements from France. Instead, he ordered his men to attack the British forces on the Plains of Abraham. Because Montcalm chose to attack prematurely and to engage in the style of warfare that was Wolfe’s preferred method of fighting, the battle lasted only minutes and the French were decisively defeated by the British troops who were superior in the discipline and skill required to hold the line.

The Battle of Quebec was not only the decisive battle in the Seven Years’ War, but a turning point in the history of North America. Montcalm’s defeat resulted in the surrender of the city of Quebec and led to the Capitulation of Montreal in 1760 as well as British victory in the North American theatre, which turned the trajectory of the war in favour of the British. Though there were half-hearted attempts to re-take Quebec over the next few years, the French Canadians ultimately became British subjects. They were forced to speak English and convert to Protestantism. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 sealed the fate of New France completely: France lost all her territories in North America.

However, the invasion and occupation of New France would eventually backfire for the British Empire. The Seven years’ War had been extremely expensive for the British government, particularly the North American campaign. Parliament thus raised taxes on the colonies, and this was not well received by the colonists themselves. Over the ensuing decade, revolutionary fervour spread across the thirteen American colonies. During this period, France became a key ally to the Americans. For the American resistance to achieve legitimacy, they needed to secure international support for their cause. France saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of separatist sentiments among the British citizens living in North America. The French formally recognized the independence of the American revolutionaries by forming an alliance with them, signing the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce on 6 February 1778. France provided supplies, arms, and ammunition to the colonial army and, ultimately, troops and naval support.

Perhaps most importantly, the French navy played a strategically decisive role during the Battle of the Chesapeake, prohibiting the Royal Navy from resupplying British troops. Because the French navy effectively controlled the sea lanes to the American colonies, the colonial army was able to secure independence on the continent. Had the British not invaded New France two decades earlier, it is unlikely the French government would have been so supportive of the American Revolution. The humiliation inflicted by Wolfe’s siege of Quebec was a key psychological factor in the French policy toward the American Revolution.

Winston Churchill is said to have called the Seven Years’ War the “first world war,” since it involved all the major powers of the 18th century and saw campaigns in Europe, North America, India, and Africa. Given that the battle at the plains of Abraham proved so decisive to the North American theatre of that war, it is easy to see why many historians would argue that Montcalm’s fateful decision to attack Wolfe’s forces on the morning of 13 September 1759 was a turning point in world history, not just a self-contained battlefield failure in a remote colonial territory.

From that point of view, the fall of Quebec can easily be seen as a climactic battle in the Anglo-French competition for global empire, a battle that the British won conclusively. Had Montcalm chosen to wait for reinforcements or allow the Canadian militias to harass and attrit Wolfe’s forces with their Little War tactics – so the reasoning goes – Quebec would not have been defeated and occupied; the French would have maintained a toe-hold on the continent; the American colonists would have felt the pressure of an enemy country’s presence on their borders and been less likely to declare their independence from their British protectors. It is easy to draw a throughline from a reversal of Montcalm’s poor decision to a dramatically different history of the West and the world.

However, though this type of narrative is common, I think it attaches too much significance to a single battlefield act. Had Montcalm been successful at Quebec, the British would have attacked it again and again. By the time Wolfe’s men reached the top of the Quebec promontory, the British campaign in the Canadian provinces had already been going on for two years, since the first (and failed) Lousibourg Expedition. Also, over the summer of 1759, Wolf had already tried multiple courses of action to get the French settlement to submit, including burning farmland around the city and pulverizing the city itself with canon fire from across the St. Lawrence River.  

What’s more, even though Montcalm’s forces outnumbered Wolfe’s at this particular battle, the British vastly outnumbered the French on the continent and eventually the British forces available to invade New France would have been so great that it would not have mattered if the city of Quebec held out; New France would have been occupied. Finally, and most importantly, the British naval blockade of the St. Lawrence seaway would have choked off the French Canadians who were dependent on ships from Europe for their supplies, troops, and armaments.

Montcalm’s poor decision was a tactical blunder, but I do not believe it was as significant to world history as many make it out to have been.