Nov. 25.

more than decimated by the epidemic malady of the limestone region of the lakes. The exploit contributed to the important result which followed before long, of the reduction of Fort Duquesne by General Forbes, or rather by Colonel Washington. On the failure of supplies expected from Fort Frontenac, the Indians dispersed from Fort Duquesne; and the French, unsupported, were too few to maintain the position.1

2

While Abercrombie was blundering and miscarrying on Lake George, Sir Jeffrey Amherst - with two men. among his officers, James Wolfe and Isaac Barré, soon to be renowned, the one for military, the other for civil service was pressing the siege of Louisburg. The operations were on a different scale from those of the time when that fortress, thirteen years before, had been beset by a few inexperienced regiments of New England militia. Admiral Boscawen, with twenty ships of the line and eighteen frigates, conveyed more than thirteen thousand regular troops to Cape Breton. French garrison, consisting of twenty-five

desperate" service he calls it. He reports that an army could not march by that way, but that a strong scouting party might do so; and that it might be useful in creating a diversion in case of a simultaneous approach to Quebec and Montreal. (Pownall to Pitt, Nov. 5, 1758.)

2 Pitt had written to Abercrombie (Jan. 27, 1758), that Colonel Amherst "upon his return from Germany to England, where he is daily expected," was to "command the troops destined for the siege of Louisburg, with the rank of Major-General,”

May 23, 1758, Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence wrote to Pitt: "The effective numbers embarked for the

3

1758.

The June 2hun

July 26.

service of the expedition amount to 13,200 and upwards." May 28, Amherst met Boscawen "with the fleet and the troops" coming out of Halifax. June 2, he reached Louisburg; but the weather proved unfavorable for landing till June 8, when Wolfe led a detachment on shore, and beat a party of French. By June 23, a hundred boats had been "lost in landing the troops and provisions." June 28, Meserve and his son died, and of his corps of a hundred and eight men all were down with the small-pox but sixteen, who were taken up with nursing the rest. (Letters of Amherst to Pitt of June 11, 23, July 6, 23, 27.) On Meserve's death, he was succeeded by Gridley, the engineer at the first capture of Louisburg. (Pitt to Amherst, Dec. 28, 1758.)

dred regular troops and six hundred militia, made an obstinate defence. It held out seven weeks, losing fifteen hundred men in killed and wounded. Wolfe was much applauded for his gallantry at the landing and in a successful assault on an outpost. Two hundred and forty pieces of cannon and a great amount of stores and ammunition fell into the hands of the English. The town had been almost ruined in the bombardment. More than fiftyfive hundred men, soldiers and seamen, were sent prisoners to England. The fate of Quebec was fore-shadowed.1

Wolfe was a man of mark after this campaign. He went to England, and there received the most flattering attention from Pitt, whose sure eye selected him as worthy to conduct the most difficult part of the decisive. operations which the Minister was meditating against the empire of France in America.3 Amherst took back his troops by sea from Louisburg to Boston, whence, without delay, he marched them westwardly to join the other forces destined for the subjugation of Canada.*

1 After the building of Halifax, and especially after the capture of Quebec, the English government had no motive for maintaining Louisburg at the heavy cost which it required; and Pitt (Feb. 9, 1760) instructed General Amherst to demolish its fortifications. "Render, as far as possible, the fort and harbor as incommodious and as near impracticable as may be." Its garrison, armament, stores, &c. were to be transported to Halifax. The execution of the order was committed to Commodore Byron, and, Oct. 17, 1760, what remained of the fortress was blown up.

2 Amherst despatched Wolfe in command of an expedition to Gaspé, near the entrance of the St. Lawrence, authorizing him, when this should be accomplished, to go to England if he should think proper. (Amherst to Wolfe, August 15.) Probably the object was an explo

ration of that shore with a view to the contemplated assault on Quebec. Whatever it was, Wolfe reported to Pitt that he had effected it, leaving Louisburg for the purpose August 28 and returning thither September 29. (Wolfe to Pitt, November 1.)

3 Wolfe had still earlier attracted Pitt's attention by his good conduct in the unfortunate expedition against Rochefort.

4 Amherst brought thirty-eight transports to Boston. September 14, "all the ships got up, and the regiments landed and encamped on a common joining the town. It is impossible to hinder the people giving the soldiers rum in much too great quantities." September 16, he encamped his troops at Watertown, September 17 at Sudbury, and September 18 at Marlborough. the next day he expected to march to Worcester, and thence to move as

Ou

1759.

The programme for the next campaign involved complicated movements, intended to bring three large English armies to a junction before Quebec. General Prideaux, in command of a force composed principally of provincials, with some Indian auxiliaries, was first to secure Lake Ontario by the capture of Fort Niagara at its western extremity. Sir Jeffrey Amherst, with an army of twelve thousand men, about half of them colonial troops, was to push down Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, taking Montreal in his way, and, having been joined by Prideaux's force from above, was to form another junction before Quebec, with an army of eight thousand regular troops, who, under the command of Wolfe, holding "the rank of Major-General for that expedition only," were to be convoyed from Louisburg by a powerful fleet.1

Prideaux was killed in some of the preliminary operations of his expedition. But, under Sir William Johnson, who succeeded to the command, the first object, the capture of Fort Niagara, was effected; and in the prosecution of its further enterprise the army proceeded down the lake. It was belated, however, by the tardiness of the earlier movements; and want of provisions and of the necessary shipping ultimately prevented the accomplishment of that part of the plan. A similar delay frustrated the part which General Amherst was to have rapidly as possible westward to join Abercrombie. (Amherst to Pitt, September 18.)

1 A paper in the British Colonial Office, entitled "Proposals for the expedition to Quebec," bears the signatures of Monckton, Murray, and Burton. It has no date, but must belong to the summer or autumn of 1758. It recommends that troops be detached from Amherst's army, and that 44 Colonel Wolfe shall have the command of the said detachment, with the rank of Major-General for

and during the expedition to Quebec only." Dec. 29, 1758, Pitt wrote to Amherst that twelve thousand men, to be mustered at New York, Boston, and Halifax, were to proceed from Louisburg to Quebec under Wolfe's command, as early as May 7th of the coming year. The correspondence of Pitt at this period with the officers in America is immensely voluminous. Jan. 12, 1759, Wolfe received his commission, and, February 5, his secret instructions.

taken. Whether this was to be attributed to any deficiency of his own in activity and enterprise, or to the essential difficulties of his situation, may admit of doubt; but what is certain is that Pitt, than whom no one can be supposed to have been more impatient for success. continued to give him assurances of confidence in his spirit and abilities and of approbation of his conduct. The French retired before him as he passed down Lake Champlain; and Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and the work at Isle-aux-Noix, farther north, successively fell into his hands. But meanwhile time had worn away, and he had just got his flotilla ready for an embarkation on the St. Lawrence when the intelligence reached him that he was no longer wanted at Quebec, and he withdrew his troops into winter quarters.

1759.

Wolfe, coming from Portsmouth to Louisburg, June 26. and thence, with the force which was awaiting him, to Quebec, found there no circumstance of encouragement whatever, except in the resources of his own genius and the valor and discipline of his troops.1 The place was extremely strong by nature, and though by no means the fortress that it is now, had been fortified at considerable cost. The force opposed to him was in number superior to his own, under a general of experience and of distinguished ability, who possessed its enthusiastic confidence. There was no longer reason to expect the seasonable arrival of the two armies from up the river, which had been intended to co-operate with his; if anything was to be done that year, the task rested on himself. To add to other discouragements, he was in reduced

1 The vaguest apprehensions were entertained of desperate enterprises of the French in their perilous circumstances. Pownall wrote, June 23, to Robert Wood, Pitt's UnderSecretary, that for the more complete security against them on the sea-board, he had been building a

fort on the river Penobscot. He had borrowed all the money the merchants had to lend, and could get no more; and the Province had been reduced to issuing treasury notes so as to provide for a levy of five thousand men for the campaign of the coming year.

health, and much of the time unable to be on horseback. He established a battery on the south bank of the river; but its guns were too low to produce much effect on the steep elevation of the upper town of Quebec, of which the citadel makes part. He landed his troops on the north bank, below the city, and formed there a camp facing that of Montcalm, who had intrenched himself on the opposite side of a small tributary stream. Here, rather it would seem in impatience of inactivity than with any good hope of success, Wolfe ordered an assault, which miscarried. He fell into a fever, which disabled him from so much as holding a pen. When he was able to write to England again, it was in great despondency, in which feeling the whole nation shared when the intelligence was spread. "There is," he said to the Secretary, "such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine."

At length his three young brigadier-generals' conceived and proposed to him a plan, which he consented to, as the least hopeless of the desperate resorts of which the case admitted. The fortifications of the city were known to be weakest on the western side, where the high plateau called the Plains of Abraham connects the promontory on which Quebec stands with the mainland, its other sides being protected by the water. The difficulty was to effect a landing, and to scale the steep ascent in the face of the defences which had been erected all along the height by the skilful and vigilant French general. It seemed a forlorn prospect, but it was the only one. For a feint, the ships were ordered to ascend the river to a considerable distance above the city, as if with a design to attempt a landing there. From the fleet, four hours before

1759.

the dawn of a day of early autumn, Wolfe, with Sept. 13. his officers next in command and about half his force, dropped down the river in boats to the landing-place which he had fixed upon, beneath a steep bank. A sen

1 See Chatham, Correspondence, I. 430.