a permanent post there; so that the declaration of the deserters from the three posts, who could not know this, might have led you into a dangerous snare, worse than that of the 31st July. Why this regiment continued the 12th in this camp at the hornwork, in spite of my express orders to encamp upon the heights, I know not; and can only attribute Montreuil's disobedience of my orders to the weakness of his judgment and understanding. It is nevertheless evident that, if you had found the Regiment of Guienne upon the top of the hill--where it ought to have been, had my orders been obeyed--you would have been repulsed shamefully with a much greater loss than you met with on the 31st July at the Sault; the height where you made your descent, the 13th of September, being infinitely steeper than that there which obliged you to make a speedy retreat, favoured by the _providential shower_. Or, perhaps you would have embarked immediately your army, without any further attempt, to return to England, after a most ruinous and fruitless expedition--the campaign ending with an incredible expense to your nation--fruitless; and, by this means, the colony of Canada would have been for ever delivered from such formidable armies. As soon as your army was reunited in a single camp at Pointe Levi, after having been so long separated, upon you sending a body of troops up the River St. Lawrence, I detached M. de Bougainville, with fifteen hundred of my best troops--composed of all my Grenadiers, of the Volunteers from the French Regiments, of my best Canadians and Indians; and I likewise gave him some small guns. I ordered him strictly to follow all your movements, by ascending the river when you went up, and descending as you did the same: in short, to be an army of observation, with only the river between you--never to lose sight of you--ever ready to oppose your passage up the river, and to fall on you with the swiftness of the eagle the moment you attempted to land on our side of it. He sent to inform me, the 13th of September, that all your army had descended to your camp at Pointe Levi. But he remained loitering with his detachment at Cap Rouge--three leagues from Quebec! Why did he not follow you to the heights of Abraham, according to his orders? Why did he not send me back my Grenadiers and Volunteers--the very flower of their Regiments? informing me, as also the posts of Douglas and Rimini, that he would send down that night. I cannot conceive the reasons for such conduct: it is beyond all conception! He was informed, between seven and eight in the morning, by the fugitives from the three posts, that your army was landed and drawn up in battle upon the heights of Abraham; upon which he left Cap Rouge with his detachment, no doubt with the intention to join me. But, instead of taking the road to Lorette, or to the General Hospital along the borders of the River St. Charles, which led both of them to our camp, he followed the