was sent round the harbour with twelve hundred men to occupy the Lighthouse point, and there he made batteries which fired on the ships in the harbour, and on the island battery which guarded the entrance. By the end of a fortnight the island battery was silenced, and on the 26th Wolfe rejoined the main force in front of Louisbourg. He took the leading part in the later stages of the siege. Walpole, though prejudiced against him, wrote (7 Feb. 1759) that he had ‘great merit, spirit, and alacrity, and shone extremely at Louisbourg.’
On 26 July the garrison, numbering 5637 soldiers and sailors, surrendered. There was great joy in England, but Wolfe was ill-satisfied: ‘Our attempt to land where we did was rash and injudicious, our success unexpected (by me) and undeserved. … Our proceedings in other respects were as slow and tedious as this undertaking was ill-advised and desperate. … We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege, and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign’ (1 Dec. 1758). He pressed Amherst either to make an attempt on Quebec, late as it was, or to send help to Abercrombie, who had been repulsed at Ticonderoga: ‘if nothing further is to be done, I must desire leave to quit the army’ (8 Aug.).
Amherst himself went to reinforce Abercrombie, and Wolfe was sent with three battalions to destroy the French fishing settlements in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He then went home, as he considered Ligonier, the commander-in-chief, had authorised him to do at the end of the campaign. In a farewell letter to Amherst he strongly advised ‘an offensive daring kind of war,’ and added, ‘if you will attempt to cut up New France by the roots, I will come back with pleasure to assist’ (30 Sept.). Orders were sent out for him to remain in America, but they came too late. He found them at Louisbourg on his return next year, and obsolete as they then were, he sent a hot reply to the secretary at war. He would have had to spend the winter at Halifax under the orders of Charles Lawrence (d. 1760) [q. v.], who had been junior to him, but had been made colonel and brigadier a month before him. ‘Though a very worthy man’ (and many years older), yet rather than submit to this, ‘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’ (6 June 1759; Gent. Mag. February 1888, p. 139).
He reached England on 1 Nov., and joined the 2nd battalion of the 20th at Salisbury. It had been made a separate regiment, the 67th, and the colonelcy of it had been given to him on 21 April. He would have liked a cavalry command with the army in Germany—which would only have brought him the mortification of Minden—but failing this, he wrote to Pitt offering his services in America, ‘particularly in the River St. Lawrence, if any operations are to be carried on there’ (22 Nov.) By Christmas it was settled that he should command the force to be sent up the St. Lawrence against Quebec, while Amherst advanced on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, and Prideaux on Niagara. His chief staff officers were to be men of his own choice, Guy Carleton and Isaac Barré [q. v.]; and he was given the rank of major-general in America on 12 Jan. 1759. Being ‘in a very bad condition, both with the gravel and rheumatism,’ he spent some time at Bath, and became engaged to Katharine, daughter of Robert Lowther, and sister of Sir James Lowther (afterwards first Earl of Lonsdale). Before starting for America he dined with Pitt and Temple, and after dinner he is said to have drawn his sword and broken out ‘into a strain of gasconade and bravado’ which shocked them (Stanhope, iv. 153). He had not taken much wine, but for such a man Pitt was a powerful stimulant; and the temperament which made him write of himself six months later as ‘a man that must necessarily be ruined’ (30 Aug.) was sure to have its moments of intoxication. Nelson, whom Wolfe resembled in so many points, was similarly tempted, as Wellington's account of their one interview shows.
On 17 Feb. he left Spithead in the flagship of Admiral Saunders, the new naval commander-in-chief, and arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 30 April. In the beginning of June the expedition left Louisbourg, and on the 27th the troops landed on the Isle of Orleans, which is four miles below Quebec. They numbered nearly nine thousand men, and consisted of ten battalions, forming three brigades under Robert Monckton [q. v.], George Townshend (afterwards first Marquis Townshend) [q. v.], and James Murray (1725?–1794) [q. v.], three companies of grenadiers from the Louisbourg garrison, three companies of light infantry, and six companies of New England rangers. Quebec was strongly fortified, mounted more than a hundred guns, and had a garrison of two thousand men, while fourteen thousand more (besides a thousand Indians) were intrenched at Beauport, on the left bank of the St. Lawrence, immediately below the town. But of the whole number only two thousand were
