The French had at first expected attacks only from Lake Ontario and from the south. But receiving early tidings of Wolfe’s expedition, through convoys with supplies from France that had escaped Saunders’ patrol of the gulf, general alarm prevailed, and Montcalm decided to make his stand at Quebec. To the last he appears to have shared in the popular delusion that British men-of-war could not ascend the river; nevertheless, he promptly summoned to the capital the greater part of the militia from all sections of Canada, save that a thousand whites and savages were left with Pouchot to defend Niagara, twelve hundred men under De la Corne to guard Lake Ontario, and Bourlamaque, with upward of three thousand, was ordered to delay Amherst’s advance and thus prevent him from joining Wolfe. The population of Canada at the time was about eighty-five thousand souls, and of these perhaps twenty-two thousand were capable of bearing arms.[32] The force now gathered in and about Quebec aggregated about seventeen thousand, of whom some ten thousand were militia, four thousand regulars of the line, and a thousand each of colonial regulars, seamen, and Indians; of these two thousand were reserved for the garrison of Quebec, under De Ramezay, while the remainder were at the disposal of Montcalm for the general defence.[33] The “rock of Quebec” is the northeast end of a long, narrow triangular promontory, to the north of which lies the valley of the St. Charles and to the south that of the St. Lawrence. The acclivity on the St. Charles side is lower and less steep than the cliffs fringing the St. Lawrence, which rise almost precipitously from two to three hundred feet above the river--the citadel cliff being three hundred and forty-five feet, almost sheer. Either side of the promontory was easily defensible from assault, the table-land being only reached by steep and narrow paths. Surmounting the cliffs, at the apex of the triangle, was Upper Town, the capital of New France. Batteries, largely manned by sailors, lined the cliff-tops within the town, and the western base, fronting the Plains of Abraham, was protected by fifteen hundred yards of insecure wall--for, after all, Quebec had, despite the money spent upon it, never been scientifically fortified, its commanders having from the first relied chiefly upon its natural position as a stronghold. At the base of the promontory, on the St. Lawrence side, is a wide beach occupied by Lower Town, where were the market, the commercial warehouses, a large share of the business establishments, and the homes of the trading and laboring classes. A narrow strand, little more than the width of a roadway, extended along the base of the cliffs westward, communicating with the up-river country; another road led westward along the table-land above. Thus the city obtained its supplies from the interior both by highway and by river. [Illustration: THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE]