A few days after the battle, Quebec was surrendered into the hands of the conquerors. But the French did not at once recognize absolute defeat. [Sidenote: 1760 A.D.] In the spring of the following year a French army of ten thousand men gained a victory over the British garrison of Quebec on the Heights of Abraham, and laid siege to the city. But this appearance of reviving vigour was delusive. The speedy approach of a few British ships broke up the siege and compelled a hasty retreat. Before the season closed, a British army, which the French had no power to resist, arrived before Montreal and received the immediate surrender of the defenceless city. Great Britain received, besides this, the surrender of all the possessions of France in Canada from the St. Lawrence to the unknown regions of the north and the west. The militia and the Indians were allowed to return unmolested to their homes. The soldiers were carried back to France in British ships. All civil officers were invited to gather up their papers and other paraphernalia of government and take shipping homewards. For French rule in Canada had ceased, and the Anglo-Saxon reigned supreme from Florida to the utmost northern limit of the continent. CHAPTER VI. COLONIZATION BY FRANCE AND BY ENGLAND. A century and a half had elapsed since Champlain laid the foundations of French empire among the forests of the St. Lawrence valley. During those years the nations of Western Europe were possessed by an eager desire to extend their authority over the territories which recent discovery had opened. On the shores of the Northern Atlantic there were a New France, a New Scotland, a New England, a New Netherlands, a New Sweden. Southwards stretched the vast domain for whose future the occupation by Spain had already prepared deadly and enduring blight. France and England contended for possession of the great Indian peninsula. Holland and Portugal, with a vigour which their later years do not exhibit, founded settlements alike in Eastern and in Western seas, gaining thus expanded trade and vast increase of wealth.