What a scene! wrote Horace Walpole. An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers! In one short sharp exchange of fire Major-General James Wolfe's men tumbled the Marquis de Montcalm's French army into bloody ruin. Sir John Fortescue famously described it as the most perfect volley ever fired on a battlefield. In this book Stuart Reid details how one of the British Army's consummate professionals literally beat the King's enemies before breakfast and in so doing decided the fate of a continent.

'What a scene!' wrote Horace Walpole. 'An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers!' It was indeed a drama that required no embellishment as Major-General James Wolfe and his men scaled the cliffs above the St. Lawrence to stand at daybreak upon the Plains of Abraham with the capital of French Canada before them; and then in one short sharp exchange of fire to tumble the Marquis de Montcalm's French army into bloody ruin. Sir John Fortescue famously described that exchange as the 'most perfect volley ever fired on a battlefield', and while that contention may be disputed, there is no doubt that in just a few hectic minutes one of the British Army's most consummate professional soldiers quite literally beat the King's enemies before breakfast and in so doing decided the fate of a continent. The battle fought on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec on the morning of 13 September 1759 is deservedly one of the most famous in British military history and filled with dramatic incident. Yet it is also a controversial battle clouded on the one hand by imperial myth and on the other by the near outraged denunciations of those historians who contend that because Wolfe broke the rules he really had no right to win his great victory and posthumous reputation.