Pitt's plan for the coming season in America was to strike two great blows at Canada, and a lesser one, which, if successful, would involve the conquest of that country. Wolfe, aided by a fleet, was to attack Quebec; Amherst with another force was to push through by the Lake Champlain route and unite with him if possible. A further expedition was to be sent against Niagara under Prideaux; but for the present we are concerned only with the first and by far the most memorable of the three.
Wolfe at this time was colonel of the Sixty-seventh regiment. He was to have local rank only of major-general while in America, since more substantial elevation would, in the eyes of Newcastle and his friends, have been almost an outrage on the British Constitution as by them interpreted. Pitt and his young officers, however, were well content to waive such trifles for the present, and concede so much of consolation to the long list of rejected incapables, in return for such honor and glory as might perchance be theirs.
The land force was to consist of twelve thousand men, a few of whom were to sail from England, but the bulk were to be drawn from the American and West Indian garrisons. The latter, however, were counter-ordered; the former proved to be below the estimated strength, and the actual number that gathered in Louisburg, the point of rendezvous, was only about eight thousand five hundred. The command of the fleet was given to Admiral Saunders, and this appointment demanded great discretion, as the sailor in this instance had not only to be efficient on his own element, but to be a man of tact, and one who at the same time would put patriotism above professional jealousy, and could be trusted to work heartily with the land forces.
It was late in February when Saunders' fleet, convoying Wolfe, his stores, and a few troops, sailed from Spithead. The winds being adverse and the seas running high, May had opened before the wild coast of Nova Scotia was dimly seen through the whirling wreaths of fog. It was a late season, and Louisburg harbor was still choked with ice, so that the fleet had to make southward for Halifax at the cost of much of that time which three years' experience had at length taught the British was so precious in all North American enterprises. At Halifax Wolfe found the troops from the American garrisons awaiting him. Among them was the Forty-third regiment, with the gallant Major Knox, our invaluable diarist, filled with joy at the prospect of active service after twenty months' confinement in a backwoods fort, and ready with his sword as happily for us he was with his pen. In a fortnight Louisburg was open, and both fleet and transports were grinding amid the still drifting ice in its harbor. Here again the army was landed, and its numbers completed from the Louisburg garrison.