stood in his way. The enemy were masters of the lake
Champlain, and possessed the strong fort of Chambly, by the fall of the
river Richelieu, which defended the pass to the river St. Laurence. Even
had these obstacles been removed, it was hardly possible that he and
Mr. Wolfe should arrive at Quebec in the same instant of time. The first
that reached it, far from being in condition to undertake the siege of
Quebec, would have run the risk of being engaged and defeated by the
covering army; in which case the other body must have been exposed to
the most imminent hazard of destruction, in the midst of an enemy's
country, far distant from any place of safety to which it could retreat.
Had these disasters happened (and, according to the experience of war,
they were the natural consequences of the scheme), the troops at Niagara
would in all probability have fallen an easy sacrifice, unless they
had been so fortunate as to receive intelligence in time enough to
accomplish their retreat before they could be intercepted. The design
would, we apprehend, have been more justifiable, or at least not so
liable to objection, had Mr. Amherst left two or three regiments to
protect the frontiers of New-York, and, joining Mr. Wolfe with the rest,
sailed by the river St. Laurence to besiege Quebec. Even in that case
the whole number of his troops would not have been sufficient, according
to the practice of war, to invest the place, and cope with the covering
enemy. Nevertheless, had the enterprise succeeded, Montcalm must either
have hazarded an engagement against great odds, or retired farther into
the country; then the route would have been open by land and water to
Montreal, which could have made little resistance. The two principal
towns being taken, and the navigation of the river St. Laurence blocked
up, all the dependent forts must have surrendered at discretion,
except Niagara, which there was a bare possibility of supplying at an
incredible trouble and expense, from the distant Mississippi; but even
then, it might have been besieged in form, and easily reduced. Whatever
defects there might have been in the plan, the execution, though it
miscarried in some essential points, was attended with surprising
success. The same good fortune that prospered the British arms so
remarkably in the conquest of Guadaloupe, seemed to interpose still more
astonishingly in their favour at Quebec, the siege of which we shall
record in its proper plac