Books: The Smell of Powder

WOLFE AT QUEBEC (194 pp.)—Christopher Hibbert—World ($4.50).

WILLIAM DIAMOND’S DRUM (311 pp.) —Arthur Bernon Tourtellot—Doubleday ($5.95).

The battles of Quebec (1759), where Britain gained an empire, and Lexington (1775), where it began to lose one, were two of the most important actions fought in North America. As carefully retold by Authors Christopher (King Mob) Hibbert and Arthur (The Charles) Tourtellot. Quebec and Lexington come to life again with the gunpowder scent of real history. As with so many battles, these were ineptly lost, haphazardly won.

Agony & Ambition. In Wolfe at Quebec, Historian Hibbert penetrates the fog of hero worship to describe the soldier as he really was—a gangly, slack-chinned, irascible young man in constant pain from a kidney disease. Commissioned at 14, James Wolfe had earned a reputation as a priggish martinet who scorned wining and wenching but relished the meanest chores in his scramble for rank. He had fought well in Flanders against the French, and William Pitt the Elder recommended the stiff-necked young major general to run the siege of Quebec, France’s major stronghold in America.

Wolfe landed down the St. Lawrence River from Quebec on June 27, 1759, aquiver with dreams of glory. But for most of the summer, he fretfully wavered between various battle plans while his army was cut almost in half by dysentery, scurvy and Indian raids. Finally, in desperation, Wolfe decided to strike. and at the last minute (possibly on the advice of spies) chose a spot that proved to be one of the weakest links in the French defenses.

Crossing the river on a moonless night, the British army of about 4,800 was in position before the city at dawn. Had the French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, waited for reinforcements, he might still have won. But he ordered the regiments available (some 4,000 men) to charge; the British held, then advanced. Their 32-year-old general, attired in a splendid new uniform and waving a cane, was an easy target for snipers. Just before victory was certain he fell, a musket ball through his lung. (Hours later, the Marquis de Montcalm also died of his wounds.) It was. Author Hibbert says, the death Wolfe always wanted; months before, he had written in a clumsy paraphrase of Horace: “Those who perish in their duty and in the service of their country, die honourably.”

Adams & the Dragon. Before his death, Wolfe found time to assess the Americans who fought with the British army. They were, he said, “the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive.” Less than two decades later, the Americans were to prove that estimate badly mistaken. Author Tourtellot’s chronicle of Lexington shows that the British, to begin with, were reluctant dragons. Their general back in Boston was lethargic, kindly Thomas Gage, who hoped merely to prevent incidents between his 5,000 bored troops and the restless Boston mobs. The man who refused to give him peace was Samuel Adams, cousin of John, a dumpy, inquisitive politician who had left his job as Boston tax collector when his accounts were found £8,000 in arrears. Unlike most of the other colonial leaders, he wanted not merely rectification of parliamentary wrongs but independence.

Few events in American history seem more familiar than “the midnight ride of Paul Revere” and “the shot heard round the world.” but Author Tourtellot (a former associate producer of The March of Time) has filled in the well-known outline with massively detailed research. In April 1775 Gage dispatched a detachment of 700 men to seize some colonial military stores at Concord. The news leaked out before the troop commander. Lieut. Colonel Francis Smith, even opened his sealed orders, and two colonial express riders, Paul Revere and William Dawes, raced to Lexington to warn Adams and his friend John Hancock, who were staying with the Rev. Jonas Clarke, the town’s Congregational pastor. Adams, says Author Tourtellot, was elated. Here was the overt British act he needed to convince leaders in other colonies that independence was the only answer. During the night. Adams, Hancock and Clarke persuaded the commander of the Lexington militia to form his few men on the town Common in a show of force. Near dawn, a drummer boy named William Diamond beat the call to arms.

Fire & Independence. When the British marched slowly into town, a ragged collection of about 40 men stood in two thin lines on the Common. The British, under strict orders from headquarters not to fire, tried to surround the Americans, but during the maneuver, either an infantryman or a minuteman fired his musket; then the rattled British troops began firing. The militia scattered, a few returning the fire; but eight were dead, nine wounded.

When the British moved on to Concord, a growing army of militia drove them back toward Boston with 273 casualties. Next day 20,000 volunteers had gathered in Cambridge. “Here,” notes Tourtellot, “was the real victory of Lexington. The little town that had gone about its quiet business for a century and a half was suddenly a symbol that united an irresolute people in a spirit of revolt that was to end only with independence.”