The fortress of Louisbourg was alike a threat to Massachusetts and to Nova Scotia, from the privateers which found refuge in its harbour and stole out to prey upon the commerce of Boston and the other towns; while the large force stationed there threatened the very existence of Halifax. Its destruction accordingly assumed importance in the imperial as in the provincial point of view. In November, 1757, brigadier Waldo, who had been third in command of the land forces at the siege of 1745, addressed a memorial to Pitt, with maps and plans, detailing a mode of attack. One miscalculation of this paper was the supposed ease with which the troops could be landed it was the duty in which the greatest difficulty was experienced. Waldo estimated that the place could not hold out fourteen days. One point he dwelt upon, the necessity of a superiority of force, and that it was essential the expedition should arrive before Louisbourg at the latter end of April.* The failure of the expedition of Loudoun had to a great extent been attributed to the late period when it left England.

So soon as the campaign was resolved upon, great activity was shewn in completing the organization. It was far advanced in January: we have a letter from Wolfe of the 7th, that he hurried from Exeter to London to receive his instructions. He was appointed brigadier-general, his commission, however, only giving him rank in America.+ Even Pitt could not break through the spirit of routine which was weighing down the service in order to give full promotion to merit. There stood between him and his desires the adamantine social barrier, the claim of seniority; a difficulty ever to recur, only to be met in individual cases, by the unmistakeable expression of public opinion.

There was less difficulty in finding a leader in the naval than in the land service. The discipline of the navy exacts from the least attentive a close observance of daily duty; and it is not possible on shipboard for the time wholly to be passed in frivolity. The ordinary every day life therefore cannot fail

* Archive Report, 1886, cli.

+ 23rd of January, 1758.

1758]

ADMIRAL BOSCAWEN.

109 to bring with it some experience and knowledge, and a few years' service as a naval officer must leave its distinct impress. In those days many of this class were rough in their manner, and had not sought to improve the slight education they had received; they were, however, perfectly at home afloat; they were excellent seamen, ready to fight their ship, and resolute in the hour of danger. The selection of the admiral proved fortunate in the extreme. He cordially co-operated with the general in command; was not restrained by ill-considered professional doubts and scruples, and was ready to take his share of the risk and responsibility in trying times. Towards the end of the siege full proof was given of his enterprise and dash; during its continuance his judgment and forethought were unfailingly apparent.

Admiral Edward Boscawen was the third son of the first viscount Falmouth. His grandmother was Arabella Churchill, who, after the termination of her connection with James II., married Mr. Charles Godfrey. Boscawen, born in 1711, had entered the navy at fifteen; he was now forty-seven years old. He had sailed with the unfortunate admiral Hozier, and was present at Porto Bello as a volunteer under Vernon. In 1742 he had been appointed to the "Dreadnought." As his qualities were considered to accord with the ship's name, he was known by the men as "Old Dreadnought," but, from carrying his head on one side, he was christened by the sailors "Wry-necked Dick." He had served in the East Indies with no good fortune. In 1755 he was in command of the fleet sent to the North American station, and it was the ships of his squadron which fell in with and captured "l'Acide" and "le Lys." In 1757 he had been appointed in command with Hawke. With this record, he was named admiral of the fleet directed against Louisbourg.

The commander-in-chief was general Amherst. He belonged to a family of respectability of Rivershead, near Seven Oaks, in Kent. He was born in 1717. He owed his first position to the favour of the duke of Dorset, who was a neighbour of his father. When the duke was lord lieutenant

of Ireland Amherst acted as page, and in this position he became known to lord George Sackville, afterwards lord George Germaine, by whose interest he was much advanced in the service. As most of the young men of that day, at the age of fourteen he received his first commission in the guards. He early obtained the position of aide-de-camp to lord Ligonier, and was present at Roucoux, Dettingen and Fontenoy. He was at the battle of Lauffeld, in 1747, on the staff of the duke of Cumberland. In 1756 he became colonel of the 15th. He was present, in 1757, at Hastenback, and afterwards served with the British corps d'armée acting under prince Ferdinand. He had attracted the attention of his superiors, by his talents and his self-control, thoroughly to obtain their confidence. It was in this position, when serving in Germany as a colonel, that he was selected by Pitt to take command of the forces in North America, with the rank of major-general. He was then forty-two years of age. He owed much to the Dorset family, and it appears probable that it was the same influence which led to his selection. Pitt had offered the command to lord George Sackville, in the expedition against Rochefort. Lord George's desire was to serve on the continent, and he had declined it. This position he subsequently obtained, unfortunately for his good fame, having succeeded to the chief command through the death of the duke of Marlborough. is not improbable that he brought Amherst to Pitt's notice. It was a bold and unusual proceeding on the part of the minister to pass over the general officers on the roster, to select a colonel of a few years' standing to be placed in high command. There must have been powerful assurances of Amherst's ability to lead to this course. Fortunately for himself, he was favourably known both to lord Ligonier and the duke of Somerset.

It

He is described by a later writer* as being tall and thin, with an aquiline nose, an intelligent countenance, and a driedup complexion. His manners were grave, formal, and cold. His judgment and his understanding were considered to be Wraxall, II., 192.

1758]

JAMES WOLFE.

III

good; neither was cultivated by education or expanded by knowledge. He was exceedingly taciturn: when in after years he attended the cabinet dinners, he rarely expressed an opinion on any political question. He gave his vote in the negative or affirmative in few words, often in monosyllables, and never could be induced to give his reasons. He is accused by contemporary writers of being grasping, and of endeavouring to enrich himself. It will be seen hereafter that he endeavoured to obtain a grant of the jesuits' estates after the conquest. So many difficulties intervened, that the matter remained unsettled at his death, and in lieu of the grant an annuity was given to the second lord. Amherst, on reaching America, had twenty-eight years' service; he had long been a friend of Wolfe, who, on hearing of his promotion to the colonelcy of the 15th, wrote that "no one deserves the king's favour better than that man."

The three junior brigadiers were Lawrence, Wentworth, and Wolfe.

James Wolfe was born in Westerham, in Kent, near London, on the 2nd of January, 1727. At that date his father was forty-three years old, a lieutenant-colonel in the army, having served with distinction under Marlborough. His mother was Henrietta Thompson, of a distinguished Yorkshire family; she was then twenty-four, being nineteen years her husband's junior. The Wolfes were originally Anglo-Irish. The greatgrandfather of Wolfe settled in the north of England, and this branch of the family left Ireland. Wolfe was the eldest of two sons: his brother Edward, a year younger, also in the army, died at Ghent in October, 1744, in his seventeenth year; his weak frame at that age being unable to sustain the hardships of the campaign.

Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines; he was not then fifteen. He was soon afterwards transferred to the 12th, colonel Duroure's regiment. In the same year he was at Ghent. Even at this early date he suffered from bad health; he wrote, "I never come into

14th of February, 1743.

*

quarters without aching hips and knees." Throughout his life, from the weakness of his constitution, he suffered from occasional severe sickness. Wolfe's education only lasted a few years, and he left school at the age when boys are being transferred to the higher forms: he had no illusions as to his deficiencies in this respect, and his constant effort was to remedy them. He was, indeed, what most men must be, more or less, self-educated; doubtless, his mind received in his first years those good impulses by which his character was formed. When at Glasgow, and he was then a major, in his twentysecond year, with every inducement to pass his time in amusement, he relates that in the morning, "I have a man to instruct me in mathematics, and in the afternoon another comes to assist me in regaining my almost lost Latin." Of French he obtained a knowledge to speak it fluently. He learned to dance and to fence; indeed, he endeavoured to perfect himself in every social duty. He was a diligent student of his own profession. It is related of him at Louisbourg, that when some surprise was expressed as to the drill he had introduced into the movements of the light infantry* of passing rapidly from point to point, availing themselves of cover, and gaining the advantage of height in an attack, Wolfe asked an officer of some reading what he thought of it. "I think," was the reply, "I see something here of the history of the Carduchi who harassed Xenophon, and hung

Entick thus describes the light infantry which rendered essential service during the siege. The course pursued on this occasion may appear worthy the attention of a general in the field. "Our light infantry, Highlanders and Rangers, the French termed the English savages, perhaps in contradistinction to their own native Indians, Canadians, &c., the true French savages. These light infantry were a corps of 550 volunteers, chosen as marksmen out of the most active, resolute men, from all the battalions of regulars, dressed, some in blue, some in green jackets and drawers, for the easier brushing through the woods, with ruffs of black bear's skin round their necks, the beards of their upper lips some grown into whiskers, others not so, but all well smutted on that part, with little round hats like several of our seamen. Their arms were a fusil cartouche, box of balls and flints, and a powder horn flung over the shoulders." "The rangers are a body of irregulars, who have a more cut-throat savage appearance, which carries in it something of natural savages; the appearance of the light infantry has in it more of artificial savages." Vol. III., p. 227.