On 28 April 1760, seven months after losing Quebec on the Plains of Abraham, the French army in Canada came back. Under the Chevalier François-Gaston de Lévis it met James Murray's British garrison on the heights just west of the city, near Sainte-Foy, and after about three hours of hard fighting drove it back inside the walls. It was a clear French victory and a bloodier battle than the Plains of Abraham, but it changed little: when British ships reached Quebec in May, Lévis had to raise his siege, and New France surrendered that September.
A winter at Quebec
After the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, in which both commanders, Montcalm and Wolfe, were killed, Quebec surrendered to the British. Command of the French army passed to the Chevalier de Lévis, who wintered in Montreal. The British fleet withdrew, leaving a garrison of some 7,000 men under James Murray in the half-ruined city. Cold, scurvy and disease wore it down, and by spring both the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography put the men fit for duty at about 4,000.1
The two generals kept up a polite correspondence through the winter. Both sources tell how Lévis sent Murray a remedy for scurvy, and Murray replied with a Cheshire cheese.2
The battle
On 20 April 1760, before the St. Lawrence was clear of ice, Lévis left Montreal with about 7,000 men, roughly half of them regulars and the rest Canadian militia and Indigenous allies. Murray learned of the advance and pulled his outposts back from Sainte-Foy and Lorette. Instead of waiting behind the walls, he marched out to fight on the heights west of the city, close to where the Plains of Abraham had been fought. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives him 3,400 men and 22 guns; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography gives 3,900 men and 20 guns. The Dictionary says he hoped to beat the French piecemeal before their whole army arrived, while Lévis, who had mustered about 5,000 men on the field, took care not to repeat Montcalm's mistake of attacking in column.3
As the French came out of the woods of Sillery, Murray left his strong position and attacked before they could deploy. The French vanguard was caught off balance, and there was hard fighting around the Dumont mill on the Chemin Sainte-Foy. Then the French steadied: a bayonet attack stopped the British advance, and Lévis turned the British left flank. After about three hours, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, Murray ordered the retreat, and his army fell back into the city. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says a misunderstood order had sent a French brigade and some militia, over 1,400 men, to the wrong flank, and that with them in place Murray's army might have been destroyed.4
The losses
The French losses are given consistently as 193 killed and 640 wounded. British figures differ: the Canadian Encyclopedia gives 229 killed, 857 wounded and 53 prisoners, while the National Battlefields Commission gives 292 killed, 837 wounded and 53 prisoners. Either way the toll was higher than on the Plains of Abraham the year before.5
Victory without a prize
Lévis laid siege to Quebec, but his guns were too weak and too short of powder to breach the walls. Everything depended on whose ships came first. On 9 May the British frigate Lowestoft entered the basin, with the fleet close behind, and Lévis raised the siege and fell back on Montreal. Three British armies converged on the town, and on 8 September 1760 Montreal capitulated. Rather than hand over his regimental colors, Lévis had them burned.6
Sainte-Foy was the last battle between the French and British armies in the St. Lawrence valley. Both France and Britain used the Gregorian calendar by then, so the date needs no conversion.7
