Major-General James Wolfe (1727-1759)

Conqueror of Quebec

Was born in Westerham, Kent, in 1727. He entered the army at the age of 14, and served with distinction throughout the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-47) and the Scottish campaign of 1746 against the pretender to the British throne, Charles Edward Stuart. In 1757 the British secretary of state, William Pitt (the Elder), made Wolfe second in command under Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Amherst, British commander in chief in North America. Wolfe's competence in the siege and capture (1758) of the French fortress of Louisbourg, N.S., earned him promotion to major general and the command of a military and naval expedition against Québec.

In June 1759, he sailed up the Saint Lawrence River with about 9000 troops and encamped above the city. Baffled by the inactivity of the French defenders, he launched a frontal attack on their entrenched positions on July 31. The attack was unsuccessful, and Wolfe's aides counselled a landing on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. On the night of September 12, Wolfe moved about 5000 of his men downstream to a landing point about 1.9 km (about 1.5 miles) south-west of Québec. Scaling a steep cliff to the Plains of Abraham above Québec, the British troops forced the French into an open battle early on September 13 and decisively defeated them. Wolfe, however, was killed, and the French commander, Marquis Louis Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, died the next day.

Wolfe came to live in Greenwich in 1751 with his parents. Their house, Macartney House, in Chesterfield Walk, near Greenwich Park, is still standing, and bears a blue plaque stating "James Wolfe 1727-1759, victor of Quebec, lived here". He was buried in the Greenwich parish church, St Alfeges. Inside the church are a number of memorials to Wolfe; they consist of a painting "The Death of Wolfe" by Edward Peary, 1762, a wall tablet of 1908, the replica of his coffin plate in the floor, and a modern stained glass window.

In Greenwich Park, next to the Observatory, is a bronze statue of Wolfe by Robert Tait McKenzie looking out over London. The statue was erected in 1930 and bears the inscription "This monument, a gift of the Canadian people, was unveiled by the Marquis de Montcalm". The statue was hit by a V1 bomb during the last war; the base still bears the scars.

From: The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

STANZAS

on the taking of Quebec, and the death of General Wolfe

First printed in the Busy Body for 22nd October 1759

Amidst the clamour of exulting joys,
Which triumph forces from the patriot heart;
Grief dares to mingle her soul-piercing voice,
And quells the raptures which from pleasures start.

O Wolfe! to thee a streaming flood of woe,
Sighing we pay, and think e’en conquest dear;
Quebec in vain shall teach our breast to glow,
Whilst thy sad fate extorts the heart-wrung tear,

Alive, the foe thy dreadful vigour fled,
And saw thee fall with joy-pronouncing eyes:
Yet they shall know thou conquerest, though dead!
Since from thy tomb a thousand heroes rise