The Campaign of 1760 in Canada: A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone

In the dying days of French North America, one soldier watched an empire slip away. James Johnstone was no ordinary observer: a Scottish Jacobite who chose exile and the French army after Culloden, he had already lost one homeland. Now, embedded with the forces of M. de Lévis, he witnessed the campaign of 1760 that would determine whether France kept Canada or lost it forever. This memoir captures the tense winter wait in Quebec, the ambitious French offensive that nearly succeeded, and the fortuitous events that tipped the balance toward Britain. Written decades after the conflict but drawing on vivid personal recollection, Johnstone reflects on the vagaries of fortune in war, the capable yet hampered leadership of de Lévis, and the particular anguish of watching a colony collapse. What elevates this beyond a standard military account is its author singular position: a Briton fighting for France, a Jacobite whose loyalty to the Stuart cause found him on the losing side of two empires. For readers seeking primary sources that illuminate the Seven Years War from the French side, this narrative offers an intimate, often elegiac window into the end of an era.