Page "Battle of Sainte-Foy" Paragraph 2

New France had suffered significant setbacks in the 1758 campaigns of the French and Indian War.

Its fortress at Louisbourg was lost in a siege by British forces, and Fort Duquesne was abandoned to another advancing British army.

The situation got worse in 1759 when Fort Carillon and Fort Niagara were taken, and the key citadel of Quebec fell after a prolonged siege and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of September 13, 1759.

The French army regrouped in Montreal under General Chevalier de Lévis.

Meanwhile the British army, left behind in Quebec after the fleet sailed at the end of October 1759, suffered from hunger, scurvy and the travails of living in a city that they had largely destroyed in the siege.