On 28 April 1760 the French army of the Chevalier de Lévis defeated James Murray's British garrison of Quebec at Sainte-Foy, on the heights west of the city, and drove it back inside the walls. Lévis laid siege, but British ships arrived first. In 1944 German E-boats struck an Exercise Tiger convoy off Devon.
Battle of Sainte-Foy
28 April 1760 · 266 years ago
A garrison wasting away
Quebec had been in British hands since 18 September 1759, five days after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. James Murray was left in charge of the city for the winter. Cold, short supplies and sickness, scurvy above all, wore his garrison down. The battle of the year before is told in our article on the Plains of Abraham.1
Across the ice
On 20 April 1760, before the St. Lawrence was free of ice, Lévis set out from Montreal to retake Quebec with about 7,000 men, some 3,000 of them militia. Murray had warning of the march and pulled in his outposts. As they fell back, his men blew up the stores of ammunition they had kept in the church of Sainte-Foy.2
The lucky minute
Instead of waiting behind the walls, Murray marched out at seven in the morning of 28 April with about 3,900 men and some 20 guns. On the heights he saw the French still coming up and throwing up redoubts. "I thought this the lucky minute," he wrote, and he attacked before they could form. Lévis pulled his right back to the edge of the woods.3
The fiercest fighting was on the French left, around a house and the Dumont mill. The British light infantry drove the French grenadiers from the house, but they pursued too far and were thrown back in turn. The brigade of Jean d'Alquier held the French left and stopped the British short.4
The flank turned
Lévis then advanced on his right and turned the British left flank, and the disorder spread along Murray's line. Through a misdelivered order, the La Reine brigade went to the wrong flank and was left out of the action; had it been in place, Murray's retreat might have been cut off. The British fell back into the city, abandoning their guns.5
The British lost about 1,100 men killed, wounded and taken. The French lost fewer, about 800 by Lévis's own returns.6
Whose ships came first
Lévis laid siege to Quebec. Everything now depended on whose ships arrived first. On 9 May the British frigate Lowestoft sailed into the basin, with more ships close behind. Lévis raised the siege and retired to Montreal, which capitulated on 8 September 1760.7
Also on this day
Operation Cowboy
28 April 1945 · 81 years ago
In Operation Cowboy, American cavalry went into Hostau in the Sudetenland to rescue the Lipizzaner horses of Vienna's Spanish Riding School at the end of World War II. US and Wehrmacht soldiers fought together against Waffen-SS attacks, and the horses were brought out safely.
1944: Exercise Tiger was a full rehearsal for the American landing at Utah Beach, held at Slapton Sands on the coast of Devon. On the night of 27 to 28 April nine German E-boats attacked one of its convoys of tank landing ships, sinking two and badly damaging a third. About 700 to 750 American servicemen died. The campaign that followed is told in our article on the Battle of Normandy.8
