Plains of Abraham
Plains of Abraham
PLAINS OF ABRAHAM. 28 April 1760. Brigadier General James Murray, who commanded the British garrison of Quebec City over the winter of 1759–1760, sought to stop a French force advancing from Montreal, under the chevalier de Levis, first at the village of Ste. Foy, six miles from Quebec (from which an alternate name of the ensuing battle is derived). Murray pulled back, however, to the Plains of Abraham about a mile from the city, roughly the same site on which James Wolfe had defeated the marquis de Montcalm on 13 September 1759. The Second Battle of Quebec was much more sanguinary than the first, and it resulted in a British defeat that left Murray penned up in Quebec. The British kept control of Quebec, and with it the base from which to launch the conquest of the remainder of New France, only because the first ship to make its way up the still ice-choked St. Lawrence that spring, on 12 May, was a British vessel, HMS Vanguard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.