Johnstone's Escape

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. As I have already written on it, I will not study the entire battle, but only focus on one man's escape during the rout of the French. The Chevalier de Johnstone was aide-de-camp to General Montcalm during the campaign. A year after, when he was taken prisoner by the British:


"An Englishman asked me one day the name of the general officer, mounted upon the black horse, who had passed their army at the moment after the defeat of our army, the 13th of September the year preceding. He added that they aimed at his horse in order to dismount him, and make him prisoner; but that it turned out that his horse was invulnerable, to escape the thousand musket shots which assailed him on all sides. I answered him that it was myself; that chance had conducted me there without any desire or ambition to attain that salutation, worthy in effect of a general officer, but that their soldiers had not followed their orders, for the discharge they had aimed at me fell in the brushwood. I felt the sound of the balls which passed me at the height of the horizon, like a handful of pease which they had thrown in my face; and I showed him my dress, in which a ball had carried away a piece of cloth from the shoulder."


God miraculously preserved Chevalier Johnstone from harm.


A general officer, who could be Chevalier Johnstone, exhorts the French troops just before they march to that fateful battle on the Plains of Abraham.