Three armies advancing
from three different points, hundreds of miles apart, by routes
full of difficulty, and with no possibility of intercommunication,
were to meet at the same place at the same time, or, failing to do
so, run the risk of being destroyed in detail. If the French troops
could be kept together, and if the small army of Murray or of
Haviland should reach Montreal a few days before the co-operating
forces appeared, it might be separately attacked and overpowered.
In this lay the hope of Vaudreuil and Levis.[836]
[Footnote 836: _Levis a Bourlamaque, Juillet, Aout, 1760_.]
After the siege of Quebec was raised, Murray had an
effective force of about twenty-five hundred rank and file.[837]
As the spring opened the invalids were encamped on the Island of
Orleans, where fresh air, fresh provisions, and the change from
the pestiferous town hospitals wrought such wonders on the scorbutic
patients, that in a few weeks a considerable number of them were
again fit for garrison duty, if not for the field. Thus it happened
that on the second of July twenty-four hundred and fifty men and
officers received orders to embark for Montreal; and on the fifteenth
they set sail, in thirty-two vessels, with a number of boats and
bateaux.[838] They were followed some time after by Lord Rollo,
with thirteen hundred additional men just arrived from Louisbourg,
the King having ordered that fortress to be abandoned and dismantled.
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