Three armies simultaneously invaded Canada; on the 25th of June, 1759, a considerable fleet brought under the walls of Quebec General Wolfe, a young and hopeful officer who had attracted notice at the siege of Louisbourg.

"If General Montcalm succeeds again this year in frustrating our hopes," said Wolfe, "he may be considered an able man; either the colony has resources that nobody knows of, or our generals are worse than usual." Quebec was not fortified; the loss of it involved that of all Canada; it was determined to protect the place by an outlying camp; appeal was made to the Indian tribes, lately zealous in the service of France, but now detached from it by ill fortune and diminution of the advantages offered them, and already for the most part won over by the English.

The Canadian colonists, exhausted by war and famine, rose in mass to defend their capital.

The different encampments which surrounded Quebec contained about thirteen thousand soldiers.

"So strong a force had not been reckoned upon," says an eye-witness, "because nobody had expected to have so large a number of Canadians; but there prevailed so much emulation among this people that there were seen coming into the camp old men of eighty and children of from twelve to thirteen, who would not hear of profiting by the exemption accorded to their age." The poor cultivators, turned soldiers, brought to the camp their slender resources; the enemy was already devastating the surrounding country.
"It will take them half a century to repair the damage," wrote an American officer in his journal of the expedition on the St.Lawrence.
The bombardment of Quebec was commencing at the same moment.
For more than a month the town had stood the enemy's fire; all the buildings were reduced to ruins, and the French had not yet budged from their camp of Ange-Gardien.