Wrong, George M. / 2008-09-30 00:00:00
The Highlanders suffered as much
after the battle as in it, for General Murray led them to reconnoitre in
the direction of the General Hospital and a good many were shot by the
French from bushes and from houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St.
John. To the French the Highlanders seemed especially ferocious,
possibly owing to the wild music of their pipes, their waving tartans,
their terrible broadswords, and perhaps, also, their partially naked
bodies. They were indeed christened "the savages of Europe."
Not many days after Wolfe's victory the Highlanders marched into Quebec
with the victorious army. The French garrison was sent away to Europe,
the British fleet itself soon followed, and the conquerors, with General
Murray in command, settled down to face for the first time the rigours
of a winter at Quebec. The Highlanders suffered terribly. One suspects
that, in spite of their protests, the Highland costume was ill-suited to
meet the severity of the climate; and, in any case, the army was
ill-fed, ill-housed, and overworked. Malcolm Fraser kept a journal,[5]
but Nairne, the other future seigneur at Malbaie, the most methodical of
men, was less ready with the pen and appears to have made no chronicle
of those slow but momentous days. The bitter weather was the dread
enemy. Fraser tells how men on duty lost fingers and toes and some were
even deprived of speech and sensation in a few minutes through "the
incredible severity of the frost.
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