Wolfe carried out his plan to perfection. Day was dawning as the majority of his forces formed upon the Heights of Abraham. It was six in the morning before Montcalm's irregulars were upon the field, and nine o'clock before the French army was in position for action. At ten o'clock the battle began. It did not last very long. Whether the French were utterly disheartened or not by the appearance so unexpectedly of the {290} English on the ground, which they had deemed unassailable, certain is it that they made a poor fight of it. Though the French forces amounted to nearly double the English strength, the whole battle, from the first French advance to their utter rout and flight, did not last a quarter of an hour. It was one of the sharpest and the strangest battles in history. Both sides lost their generals. Montcalm was killed; Wolfe, charging gallantly at the head of his men, fell mortally wounded. The wild cry, "They run!" echoed in his dying ears. He seemed to recover a kind of alertness at the sound, and shaking himself from his deadly stupor, asked, "Who run?" We can imagine the momentary trepidation in that gallant heart: could it be his outnumbered followers? In a moment he was reassured; it was the enemy who fled; with his last breath he gave some strategical orders, and then fell back. "God be praised, I die in peace," he said, and so passed away. The time may, perhaps, come when the great game of war will no longer stir the pulses, and men will no longer feel that they die in peace after the bloody defeat of their enemies. But so long as the pulses of men's hearts do answer to any martial music, so long men will say of Wolfe that he died well as became a soldier, a hero, and a gentleman. He sleeps in Greenwich Church. [Sidenote: 1759--An old French province]