No battle's outcome is ever a foregone conclusion, regardless of the larger canvas of war. The capriciousness of combat, twists of fate and the skill of fighting men have played havoc with the odds throughout history.
Such was the case on the Plains of Abraham, Sept. 13, 1759. While France seemed destined to lose the Seven Years' War in North America thanks to King Louis XV's indifference towards his colony, the Battle of Quebec was one encounter in which the odds actually favoured the French.
Today most historians ascribe Major-General James Wolfe's surprising victory to an incredible string of coincidences and good fortune. Last month an essayist in a Toronto newspaper summarized modern thinking on Wolfe and his opponent, Marquis de Montcalm, by claiming they "were equally hapless tacticians: It's a miracle either of them managed to win."
So did Wolfe simply get lucky 250 years ago?
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In the summer of 1759 New France was in desperate straits. From the east, west and south, three large British armies were converging on Quebec. By July Lake Ontario was in British hands. Later that month, General Jeffery Amherst captured Fort Ticonderoga and controlled Lake Champlain, south of Montreal. All that total British victory required was for Wolfe to take Quebec City.
Despite the dire situation, France's fortress at Quebec City remained a tough nut to crack. Built high on a cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence and defended by the bulk of Canada's army, it appeared impregnable. Wolfe's letters home bemoaned his impossible task. "My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible entrenchments, so that I can't get at him without spilling a torrent of blood," he wrote to his mother.
Throughout the summer of 1759, Wolfe tried a wide variety of methods to break Quebec. He bombed the city to rubble. He burned over a thousand farms in the surrounding countryside in what has been termed a "reign of terror." He attempted an amphibious landing west of Quebec but his men were trapped on the tidal flats and slaughtered.
Wolfe's final strategy was a risky early-dawn scaling of the cliffs just east of Quebec City with 4,500 troops. While it completely surprised Montcalm, the move has drawn sustained criticism from historians ever since.
In 1936 E.R. Adair, then-president of the Canadian Historical Society, demolished Wolfe's reputation by claiming his plan was "unsound on the basis of any recognized military tactics." British victory was the product of a string of lucky breaks and French mistakes, he concluded. The biggest stroke of luck being the French convoy that never was.
In preparation for scaling of the cliffs, Wolfe placed his troops in ships west of Quebec City. The plan was to load them onto small boats and float noiselessly downriver to L'Anse au Foulon where they would climb to the Plains of Abraham.
Coincidentally, that same night Montcalm's troops were expecting a boat convoy of supplies to arrive from Montreal. Guards along the river had been instructed to watch for this vital cargo. Wolfe had no foreknowledge of this operation, but two French deserters spilled the beans and his troops made quick use of the new information.
Captain Simon Fraser of the Fraser Highlanders, who spoke fluent French, bluffed his way past river sentries by claiming to be the lead boat in the supply convoy. For good measure he advised the guards to be quiet lest they raise suspicion. The real convoy never left that night, for reasons still unexplained.
To Wolfe's further benefit, French troops who were supposed to have been at the top of the cliffs, potentially foiling his plan, had been moved elsewhere on a whim.
Montcalm also aided Wolfe by his reactions on the morning of Sept. 13.
When Wolfe arrived at the top of the cliffs, he avoided the high ground near the fortress and instead arrayed his men on the wide and flat Plains of Abraham. It was Montcalm, arriving later, who massed his men on the heights in preparation for battle.
What followed has been called the most important eight minutes in North American history. Montcalm's troops, a mixture of French regulars and untrained Canadian militia, shambled into a loping downhill attack. They fired too early, their lines broke rank and when the British finally opened up (with two balls in each musket at Wolfe's instruction) the volleys devastated the French lines.
Adair sneered that it was a great victory owed entirely to "blind chance." In truth, Wolfe deliberately and cleverly controlled the geography and style of battle to his advantage.
First, he caught his enemy entirely by surprise. That night Wolfe had arranged a naval feint east of Quebec City and Montcalm was thoroughly convinced an attack was coming from another direction. If he got a few lucky breaks on the way to the Plains of Abraham, it was partly because the French didn't expect to find him there.
Once he had scaled the cliffs, he knew he lacked the time for a lengthy siege of Quebec before winter set in. So he purposefully engineered an open field battle.
Wolfe was an underappreciated leader of men and student of military strategy; his training methods eventually found their way into British military manuals. As such, he felt confident in the ability of his troops to defeat a larger French force in open combat. Leaving the high ground vacant -- while it violated standard military tactics -- accomplished this task perfectly. Montcalm was lured out of his fortifications to seize a poisoned chalice.
Finally, Wolfe's much-criticized campaign of terror undoubtedly had an important effect on Montcalm's thinking. Razing the city and destroying outlying farms weakened the defences of Quebec, put the city on half-rations and pushed the French general to desperation.
Stephen Brumwell, author of Paths of Glory, an award-winning 2007 book re-assessing Wolfe's military skill, says luck played only a minor role in the Battle of Quebec. "The assault was planned to the smallest detail, the timing and location were impeccable and, in the end, it was the professionalism of Wolfe's veteran redcoats and sailors that won the day," observes Brumwell. "Luck alone did not determine the outcome."
Besides, Wolfe was unlucky enough in so many other aspects of his life -- from his homely physical appearance to his tortured love affairs to his poor health-- that he was probably due for a change. And if it was good luck that favoured him that day, it certainly didn't last very long. He died on the battlefield.
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- Peter Shawn Taylor is editor-at-large of Maclean's magazine.