Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham

New in PaperbackA dramatic retelling of the most important battle in Canada's history-eight minutes of furious gunfire that shaped a continentBook DescriptionMuskets fire. Men fall. Shouted orders and anguished cries cut through thick smoke. With a collective clatter, soldiers fix bayonets and charge.September 13, 1759. For months the British had feinted and probed, constantly testing the French defences at Quebec. This morning, before dawn, British General James Wolfe's soldiers had done the impossible-storm the cliffs along the St. Lawrence River and take up positions on a field just outside the town. An army of French regulars, Canadian militia and First Nations warriors under the command of Louis-Joseph de Montcalm has marched out to meet them. Now, barely thirty metres apart, the two armies loose volley after volley of murderous fire at each other.Northern Armageddon is the story of the Siege of Quebec and its climax, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. A brief bloody affair, it brought a brutal end to the Seven Years' War in North America, the first truly global conflict-and the first truly modern one-waged against civilians and cities as well as soldiers and fortifications. This is a story of strategy, generals and geopolitics-and ordinary people. A british sailor, an American irregular, a French officer, a Huron warrior, a nun who tended the wounded; their impressions, captured in letters and journals, give us a new, more human view of the battle, one often absent from the history books.By day's end September 13, Wolfe was dead and Montcalm dying, the British victorious and the French on the run. France's New World empire was finished. The battle was over, but the musket volleys fired that morning continue to echo through our world. The hardships of North America's First Nations, the birth of Canada, and the rise of the United States can all be traced to that morning's action. Our world was created on that field 250 years ago.Author BiographyD. Peter MacLeod is the pre-Confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum, where he curated the Seven Years' War and Battle of the Plains of Abraham exhibits. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of Ottawa, where he received his PhD in history in 1991. He lives in Ottawa.