Quebec 1759 (Bloomsbury Publishing)

'What a scene!' wrote Horace Walpole. 'An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice aby stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers!' It was indeed a drama, as Major-General James Wolfe's army scaled the cliffs above St. Lawrence to stand with the French Canadian capital before them; and in one short sharp exchange of fire, tumble 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', and this book explores how in just a few hectic minutes, one of the British Army's most consummate professionals decided the fate of a continent.