Which battle in 1759 ended France's empire in America?

Discover Canada sets up this battle as the climax of a much longer Anglo-French struggle: "In the 1700s France and Great Britain battled for control of North America." The decisive moment is given a single, very specific year and location.

The guide records: In 1759, the British defeated the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Québec City — marking the end of France's empire in America. The phrase "the end of France's empire in America" is exactly what the test question is pointing at — the battle ended not just one French defeat, but the entire colonial era of New France on this continent.

Discover Canada also records what happened to the two commanders, on a single human note that has been remembered ever since. The guide writes that the commanders of both armies, Brigadier James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm, were killed leading their troops in battle. So Brigadier James Wolfe for the British and the Marquis de Montcalm for the French both died at the Plains of Abraham — a detail the test sometimes returns to in other questions about Canadian history.

The battle's location is also part of the answer. Discover Canada places it explicitly "at Québec City," not in the Maritimes, the Prairies or anywhere else. So the answer combines three facts in one phrase: 1759, the Plains of Abraham, and Québec City.

The Plains of Abraham is one of the most heavily-cued events in Discover Canada — the guide returns to it again with the Quebec Act of 1774, which it describes as the British Parliament's response to governing "the French Roman Catholic majority" in the colony Britain had just won. So the battle is not only the end of New France militarily, but the start of a new constitutional question about how Britain would govern its newly-acquired French-speaking population.

For the test, the four answer choices test whether new citizens can pick the right battle out of well-known European/British military history. The Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of Trafalgar are not named in Discover Canada's account of how France's empire in America ended — only the Plains of Abraham is.