The Battle of the Abraham Plains

[00:00:00]You could never have a battle these days that was led by a guy who had just been bedridden from an illness and was [music] heavily depressed. But that's exactly what happened during the Battle of the Abraham Plains. The British general in question was a guy by the name of James Wolfe. He was apparently so worried that he was going to die from his illness that he came up with a desperate [music] plan that he thought had no chance of succeeding. But what the plan would do is allow him to die in a blaze [music] of glory rather than have his body return to England in shame. He was also on heavy opiates at the time and this is the battle in which Britain took control of Quebec. [music] It sort of has echoes of the Battle of Thermopylae because when the British arrived, they initially couldn't [music] get into position to directly attack the city. They were stuck on the riverbank for around 3 months until someone told them about a narrow path that led up to the plains. Faced with spreading disease and the onset of winter, Wolfe decided to send a part of his army up the path to take [music] position on the plains of Abraham. There were French guards up there, but they were pretty easily overwhelmed and over 3,000 British troops took up positions opposite the walled city of Quebec. [music] When the French saw them there, they decided to immediately attack. The only problem was that their soldiers were pretty untrained. As they advanced, the French fired too early, which made their bullets [music] ineffective. But the British troops waited until their firepower would have the maximum possible effect before they returned [music] fire. This decimated the French, who fled back to Quebec. Both the French commander and the British commander would die during the battle. I mean, this really is the stuff of high drama and apparently Canada had just undergone one of the coldest winters in living memory and Quebec had very few food supplies. [music] The city surrendered after only a few days and England would soon go on to conquer all of [music] Canada.