This essay discusses whether and to what extent the military defeat of French forces during the Battle of Quebec was attributable to mistakes made by its Commander-in-Chief, General Louis-Joseph, the Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759).
Montcalm committed a critical blunder by attacking during the morning of September 13, 1759 the British forces led by Lieutenant General James Wolfe (1727-1759) on the Plains of Abraham before his forces had achieved tactical superiority; however, that colossal error in judgment was by no means the only factor which led to the French loss of Canada nor was it necessarily the most egregious mistake committed by the French during this campaign. Other significant elements leading to the French defeat were British naval superiority, a more effective and more unified British political and military leadership and command structure, and better British combat training and fire discipline, as well as the vagaries of fortune in battle. Montcalm generally provided competent military direction but this combination of factors, including his loss of the battlefield initiative to Wolfe, ultimately proved fatal to the French and Canadian cause.
Background to the 1759 Battle of Quebec
After an initial period of exploration and settlement, New France became a colony of metropolitan France in 1663. Except for a brief armistice between 1713 and 1740, the imperial rivalry of Great Britain and France resulted in military clashes in Europe, the Mediterranean, India, the West Indies and North America. The military strategy of New France flowed from the nature of its economy which was chiefly based on the fur trade and to a lesser extent on fishing and agriculture. French and Canadian forces concentrated primarily on exercising control with their Indian allies over the fertile St. Lawrence River Valley, the Great Lakes and other interior rivers such as the Ohio and the Mississippi. In the 1750s the French constructed ...