1758, 1759
Wolfe
Captain John Knox, of the forty-third regiment, had spent the winter in
garrison at Fort Cumberland, on the hill of Beauséjour. For nearly two
years he and his comrades had been exiles amid the wilds of Nova Scotia,
and the monotonous inaction was becoming insupportable. The great marsh
of Tantemar on the one side, and that of Missaguash on the other, two
vast flat tracts of glaring snow, bounded by dark hills of spruce and
fir, were hateful to their sight. Shooting, fishing, or skating were a
dangerous relief; for the neighborhood was infested by "vermin," as they
called the Acadians and their Micmac allies. In January four soldiers
and a ranger were waylaid not far from the fort, disabled by bullets,
and then scalped alive. They were found the next morning on the snow,
contorted in the agonies of death, and frozen like marble statues. St.
Patrick's Day brought more cheerful excitements. The Irish officers of
the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the
autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that the festival of their saint
might be duly honored. All was hilarity at Fort Cumberland, where it is
recorded that punch to the value of twelve pounds sterling, with a
corresponding supply of wine and beer, was consumed on this joyous
occasion.[696]
[Footnote 696: Knox, _Historical Journal_, I. 228.]
About the middle of April a schooner came up the bay, bringing letters
that filled men and officers with delight. The regiment was ordered to
hold itself ready to embark for Louisbourg and join an expedition to the
St. Lawrence, under command of Major-General Wolfe. All that afternoon
the soldiers were shouting and cheering in their barracks; and when they
mustered for the evening roll-call, there was another burst of huzzas.
They waited in expectancy nearly three weeks, and then the transports
which were to carry them arrived, bringing the provincials who had been
hastily raised in New England to take their place. These Knox describes
as a mean-looking set of fellows, of all ages and sizes, and without any
kind of discipline; adding that their officers are sober, modest men,
who, though of confined ideas, talk very clearly and sensibly, and make
a decent appearance in blue, faced with scarlet, though the privates
have no uniform at all.
At last the forty-third set sail, the cannon of the fort saluting them,
and the soldiers cheering lustily, overjoyed to escape from their long
imprisonment. A gale soon began; the transports became separated; Knox's
vessel sheltered herself for a time in Passamaquoddy Bay; then passed
the Grand Menan, and steered southward and eastward along the coast of
Nova Scotia. A calm followed the gale; and they moved so slowly that
Knox beguiled the time by fishing over the stern, and caught a halibut
so large that he was forced to call for help to pull it in. Then they
steered northeastward, now lost in fogs, and now tossed mercilessly on
those boisterous waves; till, on the twenty-fourth of May, they saw a
rocky and surf-lashed shore, with a forest of masts rising to all
appearance out of it. It was the British fleet in the land-locked harbor
of Louisbourg.
On the left, as they sailed through the narrow passage, lay the town,
scarred with shot and shell, the red cross floating over its battered
ramparts; and around in a wide semicircle rose the bristling back of
rugged hills, set thick with dismal evergreens. They passed the great
ships of the fleet, and anchored among the other transports towards the
head of the harbor. It was not yet free from ice; and the floating
masses lay so thick in some parts that the reckless sailors, returning
from leave on shore, jumped from one to another to regain their ships.
There was a review of troops, and Knox went to see it; but it was over
before he reached the place, where he was presently told of a
characteristic reply just made by Wolfe to some officers who had
apologized for not having taught their men the new exercise. "Poh,
poh!--new exercise--new fiddlestick. If they are otherwise well
disciplined, and will fight, that's all I shall require of them."
Knox does not record his impressions of his new commander, which must
have been disappointing. He called him afterwards a British Achilles;
but in person at least Wolfe bore no likeness to the son of Peleus, for
never was the soul of a hero cased in a frame so incongruous. His face,
when seen in profile, was singular as that of the Great Condé. The
forehead and chin receded; the nose, slightly upturned, formed with the
other features the point of an obtuse triangle; the mouth was by no
means shaped to express resolution; and nothing but the clear, bright,
and piercing eye bespoke the spirit within. On his head he wore a black
three-cornered hat; his red hair was tied in a queue behind; his narrow
shoulders, slender body, and long, thin limbs were cased in a scarlet
frock, with broad cuffs and ample skirts that reached the knee; while on
his left arm he wore a band of crape in mourning for his father, of
whose death he had heard a few days before.
James Wolfe was in his thirty-third year. His father was an officer of
distinction, Major-General Edward Wolfe, and he himself, a delicate and
sensitive child, but an impetuous and somewhat headstrong youth, had
served the King since the age of fifteen. From childhood he had dreamed
of the army and the wars. At sixteen he was in Flanders, adjutant of his
regiment, discharging the duties of the post in a way that gained him
early promotion and, along with a painstaking assiduity, showing a
precocious faculty for commanding men. He passed with credit through
several campaigns, took part in the victory of Dettingen, and then went
to Scotland to fight at Culloden. Next we find him at Stirling, Perth,
and Glasgow, always ardent and always diligent, constant in military
duty, and giving his spare hours to mathematics and Latin. He presently
fell in love; and being disappointed, plunged into a variety of
dissipations, contrary to his usual habits, which were far above the
standard of that profligate time.
At twenty-three he was a lieutenant-colonel, commanding his regiment in
the then dirty and barbarous town of Inverness, amid a disaffected and
turbulent population whom it was his duty to keep in order: a difficult
task, which he accomplished so well as to gain the special commendation
of the King, and even the goodwill of the Highlanders themselves. He
was five years among these northern hills, battling with ill-health, and
restless under the intellectual barrenness of his surroundings. He felt
his position to be in no way salutary, and wrote to his mother: "The
fear of becoming a mere ruffian and of imbibing the tyrannical
principles of an absolute commander, or giving way insensibly to the
temptations of power till I became proud, insolent, and
intolerable,--these considerations will make me wish to leave the
regiment before next winter; that by frequenting men above myself I may
know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn
some civility and mildness of carriage." He got leave of absence, and
spent six months in Paris, where he was presented at Court and saw much
of the best society. This did not prevent him from working hard to
perfect himself in French, as well as in horsemanship, fencing, dancing,
and other accomplishments, and from earnestly seeking an opportunity to
study the various armies of Europe. In this he was thwarted by the
stupidity and prejudice of the commander-in-chief; and he made what
amends he could by extensive reading in all that bore on military
matters.
His martial instincts were balanced by strong domestic inclinations. He
was fond of children; and after his disappointment in love used to say
that they were the only true inducement to marriage. He was a most
dutiful son, and wrote continually to both his parents. Sometimes he
would philosophize on the good and ill of life; sometimes he held
questionings with his conscience; and once he wrote to his mother in a
strain of self-accusation not to be expected from a bold and determined
soldier. His nature was a compound of tenderness and fire, which last
sometimes showed itself in sharp and unpleasant flashes. His excitable
temper was capable almost of fierceness, and he could now and then be
needlessly stern; but towards his father, mother, and friends he was a
model of steady affection. He made friends readily, and kept them, and
was usually a pleasant companion though subject to sallies of imperious
irritability which occasionally broke through his strong sense of good
breeding. For this his susceptible constitution was largely answerable,
for he was a living barometer, and his spirits rose and fell with every
change of weather. In spite of his impatient outbursts, the officers
whom he had commanded remained attached to him for life; and, in spite
of his rigorous discipline, he was beloved by his soldiers, to whose
comfort he was always attentive. Frankness, directness, essential good
feeling, and a high integrity atoned for all his faults.
In his own view, as expressed to his mother, he was a person of very
moderate abilities, aided by more than usual diligence; but this modest
judgment of himself by no means deprived him of self-confidence, nor,
in time of need, of self-assertion. He delighted in every kind of
hardihood; and, in his contempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother:
"Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious
to all the world." He was far from despising fame; but the controlling
principles of his life were duty to his country and his profession,
loyalty to the King, and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect
soldier. To the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate
thoughts he said: "All that I wish for myself is that I may at all times
be ready and firm to meet that fate we cannot shun, and to die
gracefully and properly when the hour comes." Never was wish more
signally fulfilled. Again he tells her: "My utmost desire and ambition
is to look steadily upon danger;" and his desire was accomplished. His
intrepidity was complete. No form of death had power to daunt him. Once
and again, when bound on some deadly enterprise of war, he calmly counts
the chances whether or not he can compel his feeble body to bear him on
till the work is done. A frame so delicately strung could not have been
insensible to danger; but forgetfulness of self, and the absorption of
every faculty in the object before him, shut out the sense of fear. He
seems always to have been at his best in the thick of battle; most
complete in his mastery over himself and over others.
But it is in the intimacies of domestic life that one sees him most
closely, and especially in his letters to his mother, from whom he
inherited his frail constitution, without the beauty that distinguished
her. "The greatest happiness that I wish for here is to see you happy."
"If you stay much at home I will come and shut myself up with you for
three weeks or a month, and play at piquet from morning till night; and
you shall laugh at my short red hair as much as you please." The playing
at piquet was a sacrifice to filial attachment; for the mother loved
cards, and the son did not. "Don't trouble yourself about my room or my
bedclothes; too much care and delicacy at this time would enervate me
and complete the destruction of a tottering constitution. Such as it is,
it must serve me now, and I'll make the best of it while it holds." At
the beginning of the war his father tried to dissuade him from offering
his services on board the fleet; and he replies in a letter to Mrs.
Wolfe: "It is no time to think of what is convenient or agreeable; that
service is certainly the best in which we are the most useful. For my
part, I am determined never to give myself a moment's concern about the
nature of the duty which His Majesty is pleased to order us upon. It
will be a sufficient comfort to you two, as far as my person is
concerned,--at least it will be a reasonable consolation,--to reflect
that the Power which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be his
pleasure, continue to do so; if not, that it is but a few days or a few
years more or less, and that those who perish in their duty and in the
service of their country die honorably." Then he proceeds to give
particular directions about his numerous dogs, for the welfare of which
in his absence he provides with anxious solicitude, especially for "my
friend Caesar, who has great merit and much good-humor."
After the unfortunate expedition against Rochefort, when the board of
general officers appointed to inquire into the affair were passing the
highest encomiums upon his conduct, his parents were at Bath, and he
took possession of their house at Blackheath, whence he wrote to his
mother: "I lie in your chamber, dress in the General's little parlor,
and dine where you did. The most perceptible difference and change of
affairs (exclusive of the bad table I keep) is the number of dogs in the
yard; but by coaxing Ball [_his father's dog_] and rubbing his back with
my stick, I have reconciled him with the new ones, and put them in some
measure under his protection."
When about to sail on the expedition against Louisbourg, he was anxious
for his parents, and wrote to his uncle, Major Wolfe, at Dublin: "I
trust you will give the best advice to my mother, and such assistance,
if it should be wanted, as the distance between you will permit. I
mention this because the General seems to decline apace, and narrowly
escaped being carried off in the spring. She, poor woman, is in a bad
state of health, and needs the care of some friendly hand. She has long
and painful fits of illness, which by succession and inheritance are
likely to devolve on me, since I feel the early symptoms of them." Of
his friends Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, and George Warde,
the companion of his boyhood, he also asks help for his mother in his
absence.
His part in the taking of Louisbourg greatly increased his reputation.
After his return he went to Bath to recruit his health; and it seems to
have been here that he wooed and won Miss Katherine Lowther, daughter of
an ex-Governor of Barbadoes, and sister of the future Lord Lonsdale. A
betrothal took place, and Wolfe wore her portrait till the night before
his death. It was a little before this engagement that he wrote to his
friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson: "I have this day signified to Mr.
Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I
am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and
cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and
rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service
that offers. If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany.
However, it is not our part to choose, but to obey. My opinion is that I
shall join the army in America."
Pitt chose him to command the expedition then fitting out against
Quebec; made him a major-general, though, to avoid giving offence to
older officers, he was to hold that rank in America alone; and permitted
him to choose his own staff. Appointments made for merit, and not
through routine and patronage, shocked the Duke of Newcastle, to whom a
man like Wolfe was a hopeless enigma; and he told George II. that Pitt's
new general was mad. "Mad is he?" returned the old King; "then I hope he
will bite some others of my generals."
At the end of January the fleet was almost ready, and Wolfe wrote to his
uncle Walter: "I am to act a greater part in this business than I
wished. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some
measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best,
and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not
the most commanding abilities. We expect to sail in about three weeks. A
London life and little exercise disagrees entirely with me, but the sea
still more. If I have health and constitution enough for the campaign, I
shall think myself a lucky man; what happens afterwards is of no great
consequence." He sent to his mother an affectionate letter of farewell,
went to Spithead, embarked with Admiral Saunders in the ship "Neptune,"
and set sail on the seventeenth of February. In a few hours the whole
squadron was at sea, the transports, the frigates, and the great
line-of-battle ships, with their ponderous armament and their freight of
rude humanity armed and trained for destruction; while on the heaving
deck of the "Neptune," wretched with sea-sickness and racked with pain,
stood the gallant invalid who was master of it all.
The fleet consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, with frigates,
sloops-of-war, and a great number of transports. When Admiral Saunders
arrived with his squadron off Louisbourg, he found the entrance blocked
by ice, and was forced to seek harborage at Halifax. The squadron of
Admiral Holmes, which had sailed a few days earlier, proceeded to New
York to take on board troops destined for the expedition, while the
squadron of Admiral Durell steered for the St. Lawrence to intercept the
expected ships from France. In May the whole fleet, except the ten ships
with Durell, was united in the harbor of Louisbourg. Twelve thousand
troops were to have been employed for the expedition; but several
regiments expected from the West Indies were for some reason
countermanded, while the accessions from New York and the Nova Scotia
garrisons fell far short of the looked-for numbers. Three weeks before
leaving Louisbourg, Wolfe writes to his uncle Walter that he has an army
of nine thousand men. The actual number seems to have been somewhat
less.[697] "Our troops are good," he informs Pitt; "and if valor can
make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed."
[Footnote 697: See _Grenville Correspondence,_ I. 305.]
Three brigadiers, all in the early prime of life, held command under
him: Monckton, Townshend, and Murray. They were all his superiors in
birth, and one of them, Townshend, never forgot that he was so. "George
Townshend," says Walpole, "has thrust himself again into the service;
and, as far as wrongheadedness will go, is very proper for a hero."[698]
The same caustic writer says further that he was of "a proud, sullen,
and contemptuous temper," and that he "saw everything in an ill-natured
and ridiculous light."[699] Though his perverse and envious disposition
made him a difficult colleague, Townshend had both talents and energy;
as also had Monckton, the same officer who commanded at the capture of
Beauséjour in 1755. Murray, too, was well matched to the work in hand,
in spite of some lingering remains of youthful rashness.
[Footnote 698: Horace Walpole, _Letters_ III. 207 (ed. Cunningham,
1857).]
[Footnote 699: Ibid. _George II._, II. 345.]
On the sixth of June the last ship of the fleet sailed out of
Louisbourg harbor, the troops cheering and the officers drinking to the
toast, "British colors on every French fort, port, and garrison in
America." The ships that had gone before lay to till the whole fleet was
reunited, and then all steered together for the St. Lawrence. From the
headland of Cape Egmont, the Micmac hunter, gazing far out over the
shimmering sea, saw the horizon flecked with their canvas wings, as they
bore northward on their errand of havoc.
NOTE: For the material of the foregoing sketch of Wolfe I am indebted to
Wright's excellent Life of him and the numerous letters contained in it.
Several autograph letters which have escaped the notice of Mr. Wright
are preserved in the Public Record Office. The following is a
characteristic passage from one of these, written on board the
"Neptune," at sea, on the sixth of June, the day when the fleet sailed
from Louisbourg. It is directed to a nobleman of high rank in the army,
whose name does not appear, the address being lost (War Office Records:
_North America, various,_ 1756-1763): "I have had the honour to receive
two letters from your Lordship, one of an old date, concerning my stay
in this country [_after the capture of Louisbourg,_] in answer to which
I shall only say that the Marshal told me I was to return at the end of
the campaign; and as General Amherst had no other commands than to send
me to winter at Halifax under the orders of an officer _[Brigadier
Lawrence]_ who was but a few months before put over my head, I thought
it was much better to get into the way of service and out of the way of
being insulted; and as the style of your Lordship's letter is pretty
strong, I must take the liberty to inform you that ... rather than
receive orders in the Government [_of Nova Scotia_] from an officer
younger than myself (though a very worthy man), I should certainly have
desired leave to resign my commission; for as I neither ask nor expect
any favour, so I never intend to submit to any ill-usage whatsoever."
Many other papers in the Public Record Office have been consulted in
preparing the above chapter, including the secret instructions of the
King to Wolfe and to Saunders, and the letters of Amherst to Wolfe and
to Pitt. Other correspondence touching the same subjects is printed in
_Selections from the Public Documents of Nova Scotia,_ 441-450. Knox,
Mante, and Entick are the best contemporary printed sources.
A story has gained currency respecting the last interview of Wolfe with
Pitt, in which he is said to have flourished his sword and boasted of
what he would achieve. This anecdote was told by Lord Temple, who was
present at the interview, to Mr. Grenville, who, many years after, told
it to Earl Stanhope, by whom it was made public. That the incident
underwent essential changes in the course of these transmissions,--which
extended over more than half a century, for Earl Stanhope was not born
till 1805,--can never be doubted by one who considers the known
character of Wolfe, who may have uttered some vehement expression, but
who can never be suspected of gasconade.