an action that is not the beginning of a
chain of results.

The French army took possession of the village of St. Foye the moment
the English went out of it, retiring to Quebec, and passed there the
night between the 27th and 28th of April. Next morning M. de Levis
being informed that the English army was come out of the town, and
that they were drawn up in battle upon the same ground that the French
army had occupied the year before at the battle of the 13th September,
he drew out his men and advanced in order of battle to meet the
English army. Though fully persuaded that the English general would
not risk a battle out of his town, where he had a great deal to lose
in being beat, and could gain little by a victory, he was fully
persuaded that he would return at the approach of the French army.

General Murray, who does the greatest honor to his country by his
great knowledge of the art of war, good sense and ability, had come
out of the town in order to cover that place with a retrenchment,
which was very evident from the prodigious quantity of working tools
that were taken by the French; and the vast rapidity with which the
French army advanced in all appearance, deprived him of the
possibility of getting back into Quebec without leaving a part of them
to be cut to pieces by the Canadians.

The English army had the advantage of position. They were drawn up in
battle upon rising ground, their front armed with twenty-two brass
field-pieces--the Palace battery which De Ramsay refused to Send to
M. de Montcalm. The engagement began by the attack of a house
(Dumont's) between the right wing of the English army and the French
left wing, which was alternately attacked and defended by the Scotch
Highlanders and the French Grenadiers, each of them taking it and
losing it by turns. Worthy antagonists!--the Grenadiers, with their
bayonets in their hands, forced the Highlanders to get out of it by
the windows; and the Highlanders getting into it again by the door,
immediately obliged the Grenadiers to evacuate it by the same road,
with their daggers. Both of them lost and retook the house[B] several
times, and the contest would have continued whilst there remained a
Highlander and a Grenadier, if both generals had not made them retire,
leaving the house neuter ground. The Grenadiers were reduced to
fourteen men--a company at most. No doubt the Highlanders lost in
proportion. The left of the French army, which was in hollow gr