132 Pitt in power. [1757-8 enthusiasm. France was not merely to be checked in America ; she was to be crushed and evicted. It was there he clearly saw, and not in the vast and endless turmoil of European strife, that the quarrel between France and England was to be decided. It was unfortunate for France that, almost at the moment when a great man possessed of these convictions stepped to the helm in England, French colonial interests should have changed hands with a precisely opposite result, and that ministers who had backed up the able conductors of the Canadian forward policy, with both sympathy and supplies, should have given place to others who shut their eyes to the future and failed to see the "handwriting on the wall." Two French fleets, however, were already fitting out in Toulon and Rochefort respectively, for the carriage of troops and supplies to Canada. Pitt sent squadrons to check them, with the result that the one at Toulon could not get out, while the other was driven on the rocks. Pitt's American programme for the year 1758 differed from that of the preceding one in nothing but the men and methods by which it was to be carried out. Louisbourg was to be attacked by one force, Ticonderoga by another, Duquesne by a third ; in short, the three chief pivots of French influence were to be destroyed. In the selection of his officers Pitt threw precedent to the winds, ignored seniority, rank and influence, and had regard to merit alone. To Forbes, a brave and capable soldier, was given the task of avenging Braddock; Loudon was abruptly recalled; and (Pitt's only mistake) Abercrombie, his second in command, was left in his place. For the conquest of Louisbourg, the most important task of all, he recalled Amherst, then a colonel, from Germany. His brigadiers were also men of comparatively humble rank, Lawrence and Whitmore of proved efficiency and American experience, and lastly James Wolfe, the eventual hero of the war. Wolfe was of Anglo-Irish stock, though born at Westerham, the son of a general who had served under Marlborough, and was now thirty years of age. Ever since Dettingen, where at sixteen he served as adjutant to his regiment, he had seen much service on the Continent and in Scotland. Without fortune or interest of the kind then useful he had forced his way to the command of a regiment at two-and-twenty. The heart of a lion beat in his sickly and lanky frame. Underneath his red hair and pale homely face was the cool quick brain of a military leader, matured by studious application rare enough in the soldier of any period, while a quenchless spirit, fired with a high ambition for the glory of his country, shone through lustrous blue eyes that went far to redeem the shortcomings of face and figure. In the hapless expedition against Rochefort, in the preceding years, Wolfe had reaped what scanty credit was to be gained. For years he had been chafing at the inactivity of peace, and had been forced to content himself with making his regiment the best disciplined in the British service. Now his chance had come.
