Battle of Sainte-Foy - Background

Background

New France had suffered significant setbacks in the 1758 campaigns of the French and Indian War. Its fortress at Louisbourg was lost in a siege by British forces, and Fort Duquesne was abandoned to another advancing British army. The situation got worse in 1759 when Fort Carillon and Fort Niagara were taken, and the key citadel of Quebec fell after a prolonged siege and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of September 13, 1759. The French army regrouped in Montreal under General Chevalier de Lévis. Meanwhile the British army, left behind in Quebec after the fleet sailed at the end of October 1759, suffered from hunger, scurvy and the travails of living in a city that they had largely destroyed in the siege.

In April 1760, Lévis returned to Quebec with an army of over 7,000 men, including Canadian militia and First Nations warriors. He hoped to besiege Quebec and force its surrender in the spring, when he expected a French fleet to arrive.

General James Murray, left in command at Quebec, felt that his army was too small to adequately defend the walls of Quebec, which had not been improved much since the British capture of the town. He therefore moved some 3,800 men into the field, all he could muster, along with over twenty cannon, to the same position that Montcalm had occupied for the 1759 battle. Rather than waiting for the French to advance, however, he took the gamble of going on the offensive.