Schematic plan · The Seven Year's War

Battle of the Plains of Abraham

13 September 1759
Canada
Victory for Great Britain

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

France (Fr Army, 4,500 men under Montcalm) attacked Great Britain (Br Army, 4,800 men under Wolfe) in Canada. The CAA Database of Battles records 0.5 hours of fighting on a front of 1 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Great Britain held. Losses: France 1,500 (33%), Great Britain 650 (14%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

France

Montcalm

Unit	Arm	Men
France left wing	Infantry	1,080
France centre	Infantry	1,440
France right wing	Infantry	1,080
France reserve	Infantry	900
Montcalm	Commander	—
In this plan		4,500

Great Britain

Wolfe

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	1,152
Great Britain centre	Infantry	1,536
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	1,152
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	960
Wolfe	Commander	—
In this plan		4,800

What the sources report

	France	Great Britain
Strength, this plan	4,500	4,800
Losses, this plan	1,500	650

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 77, “Plains Of Abraham (Quebec)”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 0.3 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 1 km (attacker), 1.2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Franceattacker	4,500	1,500	0	—	Frontal attack; Repulse; Withdrew
Great Britaindefender	4,800	650	0	—	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack

Attacker’s advantages none recorded

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 77 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Battle of the Plains of Abraham · CC-BY-SA-4.0

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.