Montcalm ordered the
same battalion to ramp for the night in defence of Wolfe's Cove. But
Vaudreuil again counter-ordered, this time before the men had marched
off, thus leaving that post in charge of one of his own friends, a
contemptible officer called Vergor.

Wolfe knew all about Vergor and what went on in the French camp, where
Vaudreuil could never keep a secret. So he and Saunders and Holmes set
the plan going for the final blow. The unfortunate Frenchmen above Cap
Rouge were now so worn out by trying to keep up with the ships that
Wolfe knew they would take hours to get down to Quebec if decoyed
overnight anywhere up near Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty miles
away. He also knew that the show of force to be made by Saunders the
day before the battle would keep the French in their trenches along the
six miles below Quebec. Besides this he knew that the fire of his
batteries opposite Quebec would drown the noise of taking Vergor's post
more than a mile above. Finally, the fleet kept him perfectly safe
from counter-attack, hid his movements, and took his army to any given
spot far better and faster than the French could go there by land.

With all this in his favour he then carried out his plan to perfection,
holding the French close below and far above Quebec by threatening
attacks from the ships, secretly bringing his best men together in
boats off Cap Rouge after dark, dropping them down to Wolfe's Cove just
before dawn, rushing Vergor's post with the greatest ease, and forming
up across the Plains of Abraham, just west of Quebec, an hour before
Montcalm could possibly attack him. Cut off by water and land Montcalm
now had to starve or fight Wolfe's well-trained regulars with about
equal numbers of men, half of whom were militia quite untrained for
flat and open battlefields. Wolfe's perfect volleys then sealed the
fate of Quebec; while British sea-power sealed the fate of Canada.

The rest of the war was simply reaping the victories Pitt had sown;
though he left the Government in 1761, and Spain joined our enemies the
following year. The jealous new king, George III, and his jealous new
courtiers, with some of the jealous old politicians, made up a party
that forced Pitt out of the Government. They then signed the Treaty of
Versailles in 1763 without properly securing the fruit of all his
victories.

But Canada had been won outright. The foundations of the Indian Empire
had been well and tru