ntenac on Lake Ontario. This was a heavy blow to the
French; for with Fort Frontenac gone and Fort Duquesne in English hands,
the Ohio was cut off from Quebec.

An attack on Ticonderoga, however, was repulsed by Montcalm with
dreadful loss to the English.

%89. The Victories of 1759; Wolfe.%--But the defeat was only
temporary. At the siege of Louisburg a young officer named James Wolfe
had greatly distinguished himself, and in return for this was selected
by Pitt to command an expedition to Quebec. The previous attempts to
reach that city had been by way of Lake George. The expedition of Wolfe
sailed up the St. Lawrence, and landed below the city.

Quebec stands on the summit of a high hill with precipitous sides, and
was then the most strongly fortified city in America. To take it seemed
almost impossible. But the resolution of Wolfe overcame every obstacle:
on the night of September 12, 1759, he led his troops to the foot of the
cliff, climbed the heights, and early in the morning had his army drawn
up in battle array on the Plains of Abraham, as the plateau behind the
city was called. There a great battle was fought between the French, led
by Montcalm, and the British, led by Wolfe. The British triumphed, and
Quebec fell; but Wolfe and Montcalm were among the dead.[1]

[Footnote 1: Parkman's _Montcalm and Wolfe_, Chaps. 25-27; A. Wright's
_Life of Wolfe;_ Sloan's _French War and the Revolution_, Chaps. 6-9.]

[Illustration: European Possessions 1763]

Ticonderoga and Crown Point had been captured a few weeks before.
Montreal was taken in 1760, and the long struggle between the French and
the English in America ended in the defeat of the French. The war
dragged on in Europe till 1763, when peace was made at Paris.

%90. France driven out of America.%--With all the details of the
treaty we are not concerned. It is enough for us to know that France
divided her possessions on this continent between Great Britain and
Spain. To Great Britain she gave Canada and Cape Breton, and all the
islands save two in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Entering what is now the
United States, she drew a line down the middle of the Mississippi River
from its source to a point just north of New Orleans. To Great Britain
she surrendered all her territory east of this line. To Spain she gave
all her possessions to the west of this line, together with the city of
New Orleans. But Great Britain, during the war, had taken Havana from
Spain. To g