permitted; got together about twelve
pieces of old cannon, which had been laid aside for many years, and
with a small quantity of gunpowder and very few bullets, he set out
from Montreal with his army towards the beginning of April, the snow
being as yet upon the ground; and he conducted his march so well that
the army arrived at Cap Rouge, three leagues from Quebec, without the
enemy having any information of their having left Montreal. He did not
flatter himself to be able to take Quebec with such a despicable train
of artillery, and his design was only to invest the town; to open the
trenches before it; to advance his approaches, and be in a position,
the moment the ships he had asked from the Court should arrive, to
land the cannon, placing them instantly upon the batteries ready to
receive them, and without loss of time to batter the town immediately.

Fortune favored him to the height of his wishes, and if the ships had
arrived with the artillery he expected from France, that town could
scarce have held out for four and twenty hours, by which means he
would have had the glory of preserving to his country the colony of
Canada, then reduced to its last gasp.

The English got the news of our army's being at Cap Rouge by a most
singular accident, which greatly manifests the predominant power of
Fortune in military operations, and shows that the greatest general
cannot guarantee success or put himself out of the reach of those
events which human understanding cannot foresee, whereby the best
combined and well-formed schemes are frustrated in their execution. In
all appearance we would have taken Quebec by surprise had it not been
for one of Fortune's caprices, that have often as much share in the
events of war as the genius and talents of the greatest generals.

The Athenians were not in the wrong to paint Timotheus asleep, whilst
Fortune, in another part of the picture, was spreading nets over towns
to take them for him.

An artillery boat having been overturned and sunk by the sheets of
ice, which the current of the St. Lawrence brought down with great
force, an artilleryman saved himself on a piece of ice that floated
down the river with him upon it, without a possibility of his getting
to land, when he was opposite to the city.

The English, so soon as they perceived that poor distressed man--moved
with humanity and compassion--sent out boats, who with difficulty
saved him (the river being covered with fields