By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to attack. Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.” He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised himself up on this news and smiled in my face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he died.” Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.” The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the Mississippi. Patrick Henry An Eloquent Orator Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and saw that the American cause--the cause of freedom--must be upheld by force of arms. Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he spent most of his spare time in the woods. It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop of his own--but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper. He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back to shopkeeping--and failed again. By this time people had a poor opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the course of time he was to find his element.