I don't know, any more than a thousand others, the particulars relative to the action of the 13th of September. I am ignorant of who it was that made our army take their abominable and senseless position, by thrusting it betwixt your army and Quebec, where there were no provisions, and the best of our troops absent with de Bougainville; it certainly must have been dictated by an ignorant and stupid blockhead! I certainly had no hand in it: the piquets and part of the troops were already marched up the heights before I came to the Canardière, or ever knew that you were landed; and all the right of our army was marching after them when I arrived at their encampment. The only proper course to be taken in our position, and which would have been apparent to any man of common sense who had the least knowledge of the art of war, was to quit our camp coolly--calmly--without disorder or confusion, and march to Lorette; from thence cross over to St. Foix--which is two leagues from Quebec and a league from Cap Rouge--and when joined there by M. de Bougainville's detachment, to advance then and attack you as soon as possible. By these means you would have found yourself between two fires, by a sally from the town the moment that I attacked you on the other side. I was no sooner upon the heights than I perceived our horrible position,--pressed against the town-walls, without provisions for four-and-twenty hours, and a moral impossibility for us to retire, being drawn up in battle at the distance of a musket-shot from your army. Had I made an attempt to go down the heights, in order to repass the River St. Charles and return to my camp, I would have exposed my left flank to you, and my rear would have been cut to pieces without being able to protect and support it. Had I entered into the town, in an instant you would have invested us in it, without provisions, by carrying down your left wing to the River St. Charles--an easy movement of a few minutes. I saw no remedy other for us than to worry your army by a cannonade, having the advantage over you of a rising ground suitable for batteries of cannon, hoping, by thus harassing you, that you might retire in the night, as certainly you could never be so rash as to think of attacking us under the guns of the town; at least I would have made my retreat, taking advantage of the darkness of the night, to get myself out of the scrape where the ignorance of others had thrown me. I sent several persons with orders to M. de Ramsay, King's Lieutenant (Deputy Governor), who was in command at Quebec, to send me, with all possible haste, the five-and-twenty brass field pieces that were in position on the palace battery, near our army; and precisely at the same instant when Johnstone came to me on the heights, with the news of the order which prevented the left of our army to join me, a sergeant arrived from M. de Ramsay--the fourth person I had sent to him with my orders--with a categorical answer from him: "That he