general-in-chief, was to clear the Champlain Valley, and Prideaux
with large colonial forces to reduce Fort Niagara. Both had orders,
being successful in these initial attacks, to move down the St. Lawrence
and unite with Wolfe, who was to sail up that river and beset Quebec.
Prideaux was splendidly successful, as indeed was Amherst in time,
though longer than he anticipated in securing Ticonderoga and Crown
Point.

[Illustration: General Wolfe.]

Meantime Wolfe at Quebec was trying in all ways to manoeuvre the crafty
Montcalm out of his impregnable works. Failing, he in his eagerness
suffered himself to attempt an assault upon the city, which proved not
only vain but terribly costly. A weaker commander would now have given
up, but Wolfe had red hair, and the grit usually accompanying.
Undaunted, he planned the hazardous enterprise of rowing up the St.
Lawrence by night, landing with five thousand picked men at the foot of
the precipitous ascent to the Plains of Abraham, and scaling those
heights to face Montcalm from the west. The Frenchman, stunned at the
sight which day brought him, lost no time in attacking. In the hot
battle which ensued, September 13, 1759, both commanders fell, Wolfe
cheering his heroes to sure victory, Montcalm urging on his forlorn hope
in vain. The English remained masters of the field and in five days
Quebec capitulated.

[Illustration: Landing of Wolfe.]

[1760-1763]

[Illustration: Quebec in 1730--From an old Print.]

Vaudreuil, the French commander at Montreal, sought to dislodge the
English ere the ice left the river in the spring of 1760, and succeeded
in driving them within their works. Each side then waited and hoped for
help from beyond sea so soon as navigation opened. It came the earlier
to the English, who were gladdened on May 11th by the approach of a
British frigate, the forerunner of a fleet. They now chased Vaudreuil
back into Montreal, where they were met by Haviland from Crown Point and
by Amherst from Oswego. France's days of power in America were ended.
Her fleet of twenty-two sail intended for succor met total destruction
in the Bay des Chaleurs and by the Peace of Paris, 1763, she surrendered
to her victorious antagonist every foot of her American territory east
of the Mississippi, save the city of New Orleans.

The Indians were thus left to finish this war alone. Pontiac, the brave
and cunning chief of the Ottawas, aghast at the rising might of the
English, an