What a scene!' wrote Horace Walpole. 'An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers!'

In one short sharp exchange of fire Major-General James Wolfe's men tumbled the Marquis de Montcalm's French army into bloody ruin. Sir John Fortescue famously described it as the 'most perfect volley ever fired on a battlefield'.

In this compact, illustrated guide, Stuart Reid details how one of the British Army's consummate professionals literally beat the King's enemies before breakfast and in so doing decided the fate of a continent.