
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
-46% $18.96$18.96
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: The Art of Savings
Save with Used - Very Good
$6.35$6.35
Ships from: ThriftBooks-Dallas Sold by: ThriftBooks-Dallas

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the Making of the American Revolution Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 22, 2016
Purchase options and add-ons
It took five years of warfare fought on three continents—Europe, Asia, and North America—to bring the forces arrayed against one another—Britain, Prussia, and Hanover against France, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, Russia, and Spain (Churchill called it “the first world war”)—to the plateau outside Quebec City, on September 13, 1759, on fields owned a century before by a fisherman named Abraham Martin . . . It was the final battle of a three-month siege by the British Army and Navy of Quebec, the walled city that controlled access to the St. Lawrence River and the continent’s entire network of waterways; a battle with the British utilizing 15,000 soldiers, employing 186 ships, with hundreds of colonists aboard British warships and transports from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, with France sending in a mere 400 reinforcements in addition to its 3,500 soldiers.
The battle on the Plains of Abraham lasted twenty minutes, and at its finish the course of a continent was changed forever . . . New military tactics were used for the first time against standard European formations . . . Generals Wolfe and Montcalm each died of gunshot wounds . . . France surrendered Quebec to the British, setting the course for the future of Canada, paving the way for the signing of the Treaty of Paris that gave the British control of North America east of the Mississippi, and forcing France to relinquish its claims on New Orleans and to give the lands west of the Mississippi to Spain for surrendering Florida to the British.
After the decisive battle, Britain’s maritime and colonial supremacy was assured, its hold on the thirteen American colonies tightened. The American participation in ousting the French as a North American power spurred the confidence of the people of New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, who began to agitate for independence from Great Britain. Sixteen years later, France, still bitter over the loss of most of its colonial empire, intervened on behalf of the patriots in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
In Northern Armageddon, Peter MacLeod, using original research—diaries, journals, letters, and firsthand accounts—and bringing to bear all of his extensive knowledge and grasp of warfare and colonial North American history, tells the epic story on a human scale. He writes of the British at Quebec through the eyes of a master’s mate on one of the ships embroiled in the battle. And from the French perspective, as the British bombarded Quebec, of four residents of the city—a priest, a clerk, a nun, and a notary—caught in the crossfire.
MacLeod gives us as well the large-scale ramifications of this clash of armies, not only on the shape of North America, but on the history of Europe itself.
A stunning work of military history.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateMarch 22, 2016
- Dimensions6.7 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100307269892
- ISBN-13978-0307269898
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
NORTHERN ARMAGEDDON
“Significantly advances our understanding of the naval role in the battle of the Plains of Abraham and excels all previous studies . . . A vibrant portrait . . . A visceral narrative . . . Persuasive.”
—David Preston, The Wall Street Journal
“Even-handed . . . Vivid . . . MacLeod has crafted a serious work of history that reads like an adventure novel. He skillfully illuminates the many ways Americans fit into the big picture of the continent’s conflicts, in which two big nations emerged out of a patchwork of contending powers.”
—Clarke Crutchfield, Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Writing with a keen eye for the dramatic, MacLeod tells this story in a big way, giving equal parts to each side . . . The events of the battle are finely rendered, and MacLeod makes a strong case for their importance as a precursor to the American Revolution.”
—Publishers Weekly
“MacLeod explores the extent of Quebec’s insurmountable natural defenses and Wolfe’s inability to overcome them . . . The author’s strong knowledge of every aspect of the fight prevails to produce an intricate, enlightening account . . . Students of American history will appreciate the detail and the thoroughness of this account of what Churchill called the ‘first world war.’ ”
—Kirkus
“Definitive . . . superb in its combination of individual perspective and strategic narrative. Americans (who composed roughly a third of the conquering army) did not realize at the time that as Montcalm’s men surrendered they had taken the first steps on their own country’s path to independence. This book tells us – brilliantly – both how the battle was fought, and what it meant.”
—Eliot A. Cohen, author of Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battles Along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War
“Masterful . . . his descriptions are chilling.”
—Toronto Globe and Mail
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
500,000 Years of History
Humans Make War; Geography Shapes the Battlefield
The history of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham began with a gentle rain of sediment floating down to the floor of the proto–Atlantic Ocean during the late Precambrian era. Time passed; minute grains of sand and clay settled, accumulated, and hardened into gigantic blocks of sedimentary rock. When tectonic shifts slammed them together, closing the proto-Atlantic and creating the Appalachian Mountains, some of these blocks shifted westward. One massive chunk of folded and faulted limestone, sandstone, and shale, six miles long, half a mile wide, and known to geologists as the Quebec Promontory, came to rest against the future Canadian Shield.
Half a billion years later, the fate of Canada, the future United States, and the French and British Empires in North America turned on possession of this block of sedimentary rock.
By September 1759, the Seven Years’ War, the titanic struggle for empire between France and Britain that Winston Churchill called “the first world war,” had been under way for just over five years. During those five years, British goals in North America had changed from the occupation of the Ohio valley to the conquest of Canada.
Yet although the British enjoyed comfortable margins of naval and military superiority in the region, they had spent most of those years reeling from defeat after defeat at the hands of Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, governor-general of New France and commander in chief of the French armed forces in North America. Year after year, the British in North America contemplated or attempted the conquest of part or all of New France. Vaudreuil responded by sending Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, his senior field commander, to capture British outposts and smash British offensives before they could threaten Canada.
Sheer force of numbers, however, allowed the British to bounce back from defeat, rebuild their forts and armies, and take to the field once more. As British strength increased, French objectives shifted from blocking British expansion in the Ohio valley to fighting for survival amid the farms and cities of New France.
The crucial campaign of the war began when a British fleet and army commanded by Vice Admiral Charles Saunders and Major General James Wolfe reached Quebec in 1759. Whoever controlled Quebec controlled Canada. If Quebec fell, Canada would fall with it.
As Canada’s Atlantic port, Quebec was the sole point of contact between Canada and France. A minor colony with a population of just seventy thousand, Canada lacked the human and material resources to fight a major war on its own. In the words of an anonymous British strategist, “Receiving supplies of men, stores, and provisions by sea . . . [is] absolutely necessary for supporting & maintaining that body of troops which they [the French] employ, Canadian or European, & that number of posts which they possess in America.”
Breaking this link would suffocate the French Empire in North America. In theory, the supply lines between France and New France could also be severed by blockade. But despite manifest French naval weakness, the British never managed to isolate Canada. “The doing of this by cruising [patrolling] merely,” confessed the anonymous strategist, “has already been tried in a certain degree ineffectually, & is perhaps to an absolute degree impossible . . . as the . . . St. Lawrence River must still in a certain degree be open against the most vigilant cruise.” Even in 1759, when a British squadron sailed from Halifax to blockade Quebec, more than twenty French supply ships arrived safely by slipping through the same ice fields that prevented the Royal Navy from entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence before it was too late.
The only sure way to isolate Canada from France was to take Quebec. “By going to Quebec,” wrote the British commander in chief in North America in January 1757, “success makes us master of every thing.”
Success, however, proved elusive.
Perched atop the eastern tip of the Quebec Promontory, Canada’s capital towered from sixty-five to one hundred yards above the St. Lawrence River. Attacking Quebec from the river would leave an assault force stranded in Lower Town, clinging to the base of the cliff, trapped and vulnerable. Attacking from the landward side meant finding a way up the promontory. In 1759, the French reinforced these natural defenses by constructing a line of fortifications on the high ground along the Beauport shore between Quebec and the Montmorency River and a chain of outposts extending from Quebec to Cap-Rouge guarding ravines and roadways leading up the cliffs.
When Saunders and Wolfe came to Quebec, they slammed into the Quebec Promontory and the Beauport entrenchments. For three months, Saunders’s navy and Wolfe’s army tried and failed to take Quebec. Throughout that time, Vaudreuil and Montcalm remained safely inside a strong defensive perimeter, high above the St. Lawrence, protected by 264 cannon and mortars on the city walls and 39 at Beauport.
While Saunders’s ships whisked troops up and down the St. Lawrence River, Wolfe’s soldiers accomplished nothing beyond losing the Battle of Montmorency on July 31 and adding a new level of brutality to the Seven Years’ War as they shelled Quebec into ruins and burned more than a thousand farms in hope of forcing the French to come out and fight. By September, Saunders and Wolfe were teetering on the verge of a humiliating defeat.
Bad news for Saunders and Wolfe. Bad news for the British Empire. But very good news for Ashley Bowen of Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Chapter 2
Sailing to Armageddon
Ashley Bowen
For the people of Canada, the British attack on Quebec was an unfolding tragedy. For Ashley Bowen, it represented an opportunity to advance his nautical career by acquiring experience as a ship’s officer. One among thousands of British and American mariners on the scene, Bowen is remembered for his autobiography, the first ever written by an American sailor.
Even before he arrived in Canada, Ashley Bowen had led an active life. Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, fifteen miles northeast of Boston, in January 1728, Bowen began his seafaring career at age eleven. Signing aboard as a ship’s boy in 1739, he sailed in the snow (a small, two-masted sailing vessel) Diligence, carrying a cargo of tar from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to Bristol, England.
Four months after his return home, disaster struck. His mother died, an event he described as “the greatest part of my ruining as may be seen the following year,” and his father promptly remarried “a fine rich widow.” Unwanted at home (“To obtain his wish [of marriage to the widow, his father] would separate his own family”), Bowen returned to sea apprenticed for seven years to a merchant captain. A training program like this was meant to qualify a teenager to become a ship’s officer and perhaps one day a captain. Instead, the apprenticeship turned into an ugly round of beatings and abuse. In 1744, on a voyage to Gibraltar, wrote Bowen,
the master would take his cat . . . and give me a dozen strokes on my back . . . then take his quadrant and look for the sun; then took a tiff of toddy, and so regularly he would do that office, one after another, till the Mate interfered for me and said if I should die on the passage out he would be a witness against him.
Denied instruction in commerce and navigation, Bowen became a competent seaman but not a potential officer. In 1745, he deserted in the West Indies and signed aboard a British privateer. This marked the beginning of a new phase of a career that would take him all around the North Atlantic world and give him enough knowledge and experience to serve occasionally as a ship’s officer but mostly as a sailor.
Finally, on March 29, 1759, opportunity knocked. While Bowen was ashore at Marblehead, Robert Hooper, a leading citizen, approached him with an invitation to join the British attack on Quebec, not as a sailor, but as a midshipman—an apprentice officer in the Royal Navy. Bowen accepted the next day. He thereby became one “of the five thousand men [from Massachusetts] which were to be raised to go by sea on board His Majesty’s ships at Halifax under Rear Admiral Durell.”
The Quebec Expedition
The expedition that Bowen had agreed to join was a massive land and sea offensive, aimed at nothing less than the total elimination of French power in northeastern North America. In the western interior, British and American soldiers lunged at Fort Duquesne in the Ohio valley and Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario. In the east, two more armies headed for Quebec. One would advance down Lake Champlain, capture Montreal, then travel down the St. Lawrence to Quebec. The other would sail straight up the St. Lawrence.
A British-American as well as a Royal Navy–British Army venture, the Quebec expedition involved people and ships from all across Britain’s transatlantic empire. On land, about one-third of Wolfe’s nine thousand soldiers had been recruited in the American colonies. This surprisingly high percentage reflects both the years that many British units had spent in the colonies during the war and the rising population of British America.
The naval component of the British amphibious force included a quarter of the Royal Navy—forty-nine warships, crewed by 13,500 sailors and 2,100 marines. One hundred and nineteen transports crewed by a further 4,500 sailors carried troops and supplies. Vice Admiral Saunders described seventy-four of these transports as “American,” forty-five as “English.”
With the fleet “in great want of seamen,” Saunders asked for colonial sailors. In response to this request, an unknown but significant number of Americans volunteered to serve with the Royal Navy during the siege of Quebec. Like American provincial troops, they took part in the campaign, then demobilized and returned to their homes in the fall. Two hundred and forty sailors from Boston caught up with the fleet in Halifax before the expedition began. More arrived from New England over the summer. Senior naval officers treated the Americans as a distinct group known as “New England volunteers,” a group that included Ashley Bowen.
Prior to the opening of the campaign, Saunders had written to the governors of New York and Massachusetts. After informing them that “the fleet and part of the army in North America will proceed early up the River St. Lawrence to Quebec, and consequently stand in need of frequent supplies of all kinds of refreshments,” he asked that they encourage American merchants to send shipments of provisions to the British forces at Quebec. The merchant community seized this opportunity. Throughout the siege, American shipping sailed up the St. Lawrence carrying supplies to the British forces at Quebec.
At least three African American teamsters, “Jack,” “Leto,” and “Jeremy,” accompanied the expedition. They formed part of a body of civilian contractors who cared for eighty oxen and forty-two draft horses that were embarked with Wolfe’s army to haul supplies and artillery. A floating herd of 591 cattle from Boston came along to provide fresh meat for the army and the fleet.
Bowen Joins HMS Pembroke
Now a midshipman, Bowen recruited thirty-two sailors and departed with them aboard the schooner Apollo on April 12. Bowen and his followers were not the only American passengers aboard Apollo who were heading for Quebec. “We have,” he wrote, “Captain [Joseph] Goreham with a company of Rangers on board.”
On April 16, the Apollo entered Halifax harbor. On the seventeenth, Bowen joined HMS Pembroke, along with fifteen other New Englanders and fifty-eight soldiers of the Royal American Regiment.
When Bowen came aboard, John Simcoe, captain of HMS Pembroke, took some time to get to know his new American midshipman. Bowen recorded their conversation:
He said to me, “What country are you of?”
I said I was born in Marblehead.
“Did you serve your time to the sea?”
I said, “Yes, Sir.”
“What trade did you use?”
I said, up the Mediterranean.
“What part?”
I said, “From Gibraltar to Port Mahon and to Cagliari on the Island Sardinia for salt and back to Mahon and home to Boston again.”
A day later, Bowen described his accommodations:
The last night I lodged on board His Majesty’s Ship Pembroke. This morning at eight I turned out and got breakfast. Note: I mess with Mr. Buckels and Mr. Crisp [two other midshipmen]. I mess on the starboard side just abaft the pump well in the orlop [the lowest deck of the ship], and lodge in the best bower tier [where anchor cables were stored] on the same side.
Aboard HMS Pembroke, Bowen came under the command of Rear Admiral Philip Durell.
Educated by his aunt, Durell went to sea for the first time aboard his uncle’s ship at the age of fourteen in 1721, then spent the next five years learning his trade while serving off the Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England coasts. Promoted to lieutenant in 1731 and captain in 1743, he took part in the first siege of Louisbourg in 1745. In the course of that siege, he assisted in the capture of a French warship and two merchant ships and charted Louisbourg harbor. Ten years later, Durell briefly returned to North America to reinforce a British squadron operating off Louisbourg and Newfoundland. In 1758, he played a key role in the British landing at Louisbourg.
As the British admiral with the most experience in North American waters, Durell could expect to be in the forefront of future campaigns in the region. When most of the army and the fleet that captured Louisbourg sailed for Britain, New York, or New England, Durell and his squadron remained at Halifax, ready to take the lead in the next operation.
From Halifax to the St. Lawrence
As troops and ships assembled in Britain and British America, Durell received orders to blockade the St. Lawrence River as soon as the spring breakup of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence allowed him to sail from Halifax.
Following the siege of Louisbourg in 1758, the British had confirmed Canada’s vulnerability to a spring blockade when one of Wolfe’s officers questioned the crew of a captured fishing boat off Gaspé. “These prisoners,” wrote Wolfe, “assured us that there was great scarcity of provisions and great distress at Quebec” and “that the colony must be ruined, unless very early & very powerful assistance” arrived from France in 1759. In an undated note, Wolfe suggested that “a fleet at the Isle of Bic [in the lower St. Lawrence River] early in the year will probably complete the destruction of Canada.”
Durell’s mission was to do just that. Toward the end of March 1759, he began sending out small vessels to survey ice conditions on the first leg of the sea route from Halifax to Quebec. On April 8, his ships were ready for sea. Owing, however, to unfavorable winds and reports of “such quantities of ice that . . . it is not as yet practicable for ships to pass to the eastward, without running great danger,” the squadron did not leave Halifax harbor until May 5.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf; 1st edition (March 22, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307269892
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307269898
- Item Weight : 1.85 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.7 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #200,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Pre-Confederation Canadian History
- #12 in Canadian Military History
- #156 in U.S. Colonial Period History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book well-written and thoroughly researched. They appreciate its historical content, with one customer noting how it provides context for the struggle.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Select to learn more
Customers appreciate the historical content of the book, with one mentioning how it provides context for the struggle and another noting how it built their understanding.
"Excellent, well written. Built a stronger understanding for me why Canada is such a great country" Read more
"...in this book is that climactic battle, although it also provides a context for the struggle...." Read more
"i like history, and I found this to be history that i enjoyed reading ." Read more
"Almost finished with this book. Great history." Read more
Customers appreciate the depth of the book, noting its thorough research and detailed content.
"...This book does a fine job outlining the process in detail, providing much information. The aftermath, too, is discussed...." Read more
"This book is well-researched and thorough. It has a lot of detail that never gets into the history of the Seven Years War; however, it is very badly..." Read more
"For history lovers the book was well worth reading. It was thoroughly researched and provided a good picture of all out warfare against everyone,..." Read more
Customers find the book well-written.
"Excellent, well written. Built a stronger understanding for me why Canada is such a great country" Read more
"An easy five stars for a book well-written by someone a master of the era, the place, and the details...." Read more
"For history lovers the book was well worth reading...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2016Excellent, well written. Built a stronger understanding for me why Canada is such a great country
- Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2016This is a welcome book on the battle for Quebec, which helped determine the outcome of the so-called French and Indian War. The focus in this book is that climactic battle, although it also provides a context for the struggle. The British had had difficulties fighting the French mixed forces (regular army, militia, and Native Americans) and the French were apparently well situated in their defense of Quebec.
One point made by the author is that Quebec's defense was enhanced immensely by a geological formation going back 500,000 years. The Quebec Promontory was a raised formation six miles long and a half mile wide. Attackers had to scale a steep slop up from the river and elsewhere along the promontory. Quebec and French forces held that piece of ground.
The leader of the French forces at Quebec was General Montcalm, who had established a pretty good record in the war. On the English side? General Wolfe. The English, with their fleet, had control of the river. The French forces--and citizens of Quebec--struggled with acquiring enough food and other needed goods. There is a nice discussion of how the French strove to create logistics to provide food and other needed goods.
Wolfe and the English were quite frustrated in trying to take Quebec. Oddly enough, after his successes, Montcalm was "down" over his view of the French prospects. The story continues. . . . Observing the Promontory along the St. Lawrence River, he came to see that an attack might be made. And, because they saw the heights as unscalable, the French had only small forces guarding the heights. As many know, Wolfe was able to bring his troops up the steep grade to the Plains of Abraham. When the French became aware of this, they moved to meet the British.. Montcalm seemed to lose control of events.
The battle was difficult. In the aftermath, with the French withdrawing and both commanding generals dead, the British moved to put Quebec under siege. Pretty much all that was left to defend to city were militia. With food supplies dwindling and British cannonades, morale dropped. The story goes on to consider the second battle of the Plains of Abraham (I had not realized that there was a second battle!). Although the French won the contest, it was too late. Quebec fell, the French retreated, and the inevitable British victory ensued.
This book does a fine job outlining the process in detail, providing much information. The aftermath, too, is discussed. This book is worthy of being added to one's library.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2016An easy five stars for a book well-written by someone a master of the era, the place, and the details. Macleod has obviously lived with the subject a long time. To illustrate how good it is, I will mention it's only fault: he might have told us that "L'Anse au Foulon", the name of the most critical site, means "Cove of The Fullers Earth"' a clay used in washing clothes. A good laundry spot needs a trail to it - and it was just that trail that determined the outcome.
Pretty minor for perhaps the only fault.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2016This book is well-researched and thorough. It has a lot of detail that never gets into the history of the Seven Years War; however, it is very badly in need of proofreading. Paragraphs end in the middle and the story takes up somewhere else. Paragraph repeat themselves throughout the book. A $15 Kindle book should not have these quality problems.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2017i like history, and I found this to be history that i enjoyed reading .
- Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2016For history lovers the book was well worth reading. It was thoroughly researched and provided a good picture of all out warfare against everyone, including civilians. Wolfe is depicted as a merciless warrior who used any means to conquer Montreal. The hero of the Battle of Culloden was a careful leader and quick to seize opportunities, but completely focused on victory to the exclusion of everything else.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017Almost finished with this book. Great history.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2019It was a gift
Top reviews from other countries
- RGReviewed in Canada on September 22, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting story.
Well written, riveting. Tells the story of real people who lived through this period of our amazing history.