The Battle of the Plains of Abraham is one of the pivotal events in North American and global history. This clash between British general James Wolfe and French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on September 13, 1759, led to the British victory in the Seven Years’ War in North America, which in turn led to the creation of Canada and the United States as we know them today.

Rooted in original research, featuring quotations and images that have never appeared before, Northern Armageddon immerses the reader in the campaign, battle and siege through the eyes of dozens of participants, such as British sailor William Hunter, four Quebec residents enduring the bombing of their city and a teenage Huron warrior. Shifting from perspective to perspective, we move from the bombardment of Quebec to the field of combat, where Montcalm and Wolfe gave their orders but thousands of individual soldiers determined the outcome of the battle. In the final chapters, MacLeod traces the battle’s impact on Canada, the United States, both countries’ Aboriginals and the world, from 1759 into the twenty-first century.

Dr. Peter MacLeod is the pre-Confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum, where he curated the exhibition 1812. A longstanding student of 18th-century Canada, he is the author of The Canadian Iroquois and The Seven Years’ War (published in French as Les Iroquois et la guerre de sept ans) and Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (published in French as La vérité sur la bataille des Plaines d’Abraham). He lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

D. Peter MacLeod's profile page

• Nominated, J.W. Dafoe Foundation Book Prize

"MacLeod has delved deeply into the archives to pull out new eyewitness accounts, and his descriptions of the fighting are chilling. In his masterful prose, the reader can taste the sweat, smell the fear and hear the screams of agony. But the real strength of the work is the detailed examination of events leading up to the battle...MacLeod paints a brutal picture of the fierce contest that decided Canada's fate."

Globe & Mail

"MacLeod -- whose day job is pre-confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa -- marries an academic historian's fidelity to detail and a crisp writing style out of the Pierre Berton school of popular history. It's a happy union for the reader...Northern Armageddon is straight-up military history, a vivid retelling of the battle that focuses on strategy, logistics, weaponry and military psychology."

Winnipeg Free Press

"MacLeod is the pre-Confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum and his splendidly written and researched book makes clear that the battle was a close-run struggle."

Legion Magazine

"Rooted in original research, featuring quotations and images that have never appeared before, Northern Armageddon immerses the reader in the campaign, battle and siege through the eyes of dozens of participants."

History Society

"Finally a book about...Armageddon, 1759...Almost 250 years ago, in an eight-minute span, a brief fight on the Plains of Abraham shaped the future of our continent. In Northern Armageddon, author Peter MacLeod presents a vivid, blow-by-blow account of that pivotal battle in Canadian history. As he notes, the bloody affair, which took place outside Quebec City on Sept. 13, 1759, helped determine the fate of North America's First Nations, and the future paths of Canada and the US."

Maclean's

"Northern Armageddon is riveting, human and thoroughly engaging, a must-read for anyone hoping to understand Canada."

Ottawa Citizen

"MacLeod, a pre-Confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum, has written what is surely the definitive account of the battle...Those who like to dress up as soldiers and re-enact the battle will discover the compass points of every strategic position and exactly how many cartridges to carry...This kind of details is clearly of great interest to some readers, but MacLeod does not neglect the distinctly unstrategic and often mundane details that make or break a war, such as the cartloads of pork and beans, driven by women and children, that saved Canada time and again."

Canadian Geographic

"A wound that has never really healed, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham has long fixated professional and amateur scholars. Historian Peter MacLeod's masterful Northern Armageddon weaves an impressive amount of fact and anecdotal material into a dramatic narrative, weighing old myths and adding a few new ones of his own. Apart from a superb analytical mind and clear, stylish prose, his greatest strength is an informed obsession with military strategy. While the best of the old-school scholars, Francis Parkman and C.P. Stacey, wrote like aged army hounds, rehashing the game, awarding their own medals and lashes, MacLeod takes us onto the battlefield...Northern Armageddon is riveting, human and thoroughly engaging, a must-read for anyone hoping to understand Canada"

Montreal Gazette