provided they would send to him from Europe a ship loaded with
field-pieces and ammunition, to set sail from Europe in the month of
February, in order to be in the St. Lawrence river before the arrival
of the English, and near Quebec in the month of April. He collected
our army as soon as the season permitted; got together about twelve
pieces of old cannon, which had been laid aside for many years, and
with a small quantity of gunpowder and very few bullets, he set out
from Montreal with his army towards the beginning of April, the snow
being as yet upon the ground; and he conducted his march so well that
the army arrived at Cap Rouge, three leagues from Quebec, without the
enemy having any information of their having left Montreal. He did not
flatter himself to be able to take Quebec with such a despicable train
of artillery, and his design was only to invest the town; to open the
trenches before it; to advance his approaches, and be in a position,
the moment the ships he had asked from the Court should arrive, to
land the cannon, placing them instantly upon the batteries ready to
receive them, and without loss of time to batter the town immediately.

Fortune favored him to the height of his wishes, and if the ships had
arrived with the artillery he expected from France, that town could
scarce have held out for four and twenty hours, by which means he
would have had the glory of preserving to his country the colony of
Canada, then reduced to its last gasp.

The English got the news of our army's being at Cap Rouge by a most
singular accident, which greatly manifests the predominant power of
Fortune in military operations, and shows that the greatest general
cannot guarantee success or put himself out of the reach of those
events which human understanding cannot foresee, whereby the best
combined and well-formed schemes are frustrated in their execution. In