British forces captured Montreal in September 1760, effectively ending French rule in Canada. The surrender came on September 8, after a coordinated British offensive known as the Montreal campaign.
The campaign used three British forces converging on the city. General Jeffery Amherst advanced from the west through Lake Ontario, James Murray moved from Quebec, and William Haviland approached from the south near Lake Champlain. Their combined strength overwhelmed the smaller and poorly supplied French army defending New France.
Montreal was the largest remaining French settlement in Canada after Quebec fell to the British in 1759. French commander François de Lévis wanted terms that would preserve the honors of war, but Governor Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, agreed to surrender when continued resistance appeared impossible. The capitulation completed the British conquest of the colony.
Montreal’s fall ended organized French military control in Canada, but it did not formally settle the entire imperial dispute immediately. France ceded Canada to Britain in the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1763. Quebec City was captured first, while Louisbourg and Detroit were important elsewhere; neither was the final city whose surrender ended French rule in Canada.