three were wounded, among them
Colonel Simon Fraser himself. Malcolm Fraser was dangerously wounded;
but he tells us gleefully that within twenty days he was entirely cured.
Nairne seems to have gone through the fight without a hurt. It was
surely by a strange turn of fortune that men, some of whom fought
against George II in '45 and had been condemned as traitors, should
fifteen years later shed their blood like water for the same sovereign.
Malcolm Fraser was disposed to be critical of Murray's tactics. He ought
to have stood like a wall on the rising ground near Quebec, says Fraser;
but "his passion for glory getting the better of his reason he ordered
the army to march out and attack the enemy ... in a situation the most
desired by them and [that] ought to be avoided by us as the Canadians
and Savages could be used against us to the greatest advantage in their
beloved ... element, woods." Nearly half a century later when Malcolm
Fraser was giving advice to a young officer, Nairne's son, he advised
him not to be too critical of the actions of his superiors. The
confident young diarist of 1760 had meanwhile learned reserve. But he
was not alone among the Highlanders in his criticism of Murray. A Murray
led at Culloden in April, 1746, as at Quebec in April, 1760. Lieutenant
Charles Stewart was wounded in both battles; as he lay in Quebec
surrounded by brother officers he said, "From April battles and Murray
generals, Good Lord deliver me." It is to General Murray's credit that,
when the remark was repeated to him, he called on his subordinate to
express the hope for better luck next time.

A little later Quebec was saved by the arrival of a British fleet and
the French fell back on Montreal. Murray followed them but the
Highlanders remained in garrison at Quebec, apparently because, with
half the officers and men invalided, they could make but a poor muster
for active campaigning. It thus happened that Nairne and Fraser did not
share the glory of being present at the fall of Montreal. There, on a
September day in 1760, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil,
handed over to General Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in America of the
armies of Great Britain, the vast territory which he had ruled. It was
not certain, albeit the great Pitt was resolved what to do, that, when
the war ended, the country would not be handed back to France. The
French officers professed, indeed, to believe that a peace was imminent
by