James Wolfe

EARLY LIFE

James Wolfe was born at the local vicarage on January 2, 1727 at Westerham, Kent.

He was the older of two sons of Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Edward Wolfe, a veteran soldier of Irish origin, and the former Henrietta Thompson.

James Wolfe by Joseph Simpson

James grew up a frail child but he had an iron wind.

James lived for first 13 years in a handsome gabled house called Spiers (now Quebec House) at Westerham. Kent.

Around 1738, the Wolfe family moved to McCartney House in Croom's Hill, Greenwich, London.

EARLY CAREER 

From his earliest years, Wolfe was destined for a career as a soldier. He first entered military service at age thirteen, when he joined his father's Marine regiment.

James Wolfe was given his first commission as a second lieutenant in his father's regiment of Marines in 1741.

Early in 1742 he transferred to the 12th Regiment of Foot, a British Army infantry regiment.

Wolfe saw extensive service in Europe where he fought during the War of the Austrian Succession. During his service in Flanders he fought in the Battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy.

Wolfe first saw action at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743.

Wolfe also took part in the suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion, fighting in the Battles  of Falkirk and Culloden in Scotland.

The advancement of his career was halted by the Peace Treaty of 1748. Wolfe spent much of the next eight years on garrison duty in the Scottish Highlands.

During this period, Wolfe took up the studies he had missed in his teens. He learned languages and mathematics and read widely in history and philosophy.

Wolfe rose rapidly in his army career by remarkable demonstrations of tactical skill and personal bravery.

Already a captain at the age of 17 and brigade major at the age of 18, Wolfe was promoted again to lieutenant-colonel in 1750 aged 23.

The outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756 offered Wolfe fresh opportunities for advancement. In 1758, the British attacked New France by sea ; now a Brigadier General, he played an important part in capturing the French Fort at Louisburg (located in present-day Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia). Wolfe’s brigade landed under heavy fire, laid siege and finally took the fort.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Wolfe was over 6 foot, painfully thin with a shock of red hair, pointed nose and long awkward fingers.

Moody and brilliant, Wolfe was an intelligent strategist who was brave in battle.

When George II once expressed his admiration of Wolfe, someone observed that the general was mad. "Oh! he is mad, is he?" said the king with great quickness. "Then I wish he would bite some other of my generals."

HEALTH 

All his life Wolfe was plagued by rheumatism and consumption, and he used to suffer awful remedies proffered by his mother including "a cure" based on snails and garden worms steeped in beer.

The sickly general was ill with a kidney infection in his glorious last month on the banks of the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Quebec.

QUEBEC 

As Wolfe had done an admirable job at Louisbourg, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Elder, chose him to lead the British assault on Québec City the following year.

In a rowboat on the St Lawrence River, the night before his fatal attack on Québec, Wolfe sat and repeated Gray's Elegy, which he greatly admired.

Wolfe was thought to be mad to attack the French-held Québec City. He made a surprise night landing above the town on September 12, 1759, when 4,400 British troops dismembered in a little cove called the Anse du Fouton at the bottom of the cliffs beyond Quebec. From there they scaled the near vertical Heights of Abraham in the darkness hauling guns up behind them on ropes. The French awoke to find the British troops ready for battle on the Plains of Abraham.

Drawing by a soldier of Wolfe's army depicting the easy climbing of soldiers

The British, using brief controlled volleys of shots, tore through the French ranks. Wolfe's training of his troops in disciplined fire brought them victory.

Wolfe died on September 13, 1759 at the moment of victory. He was struck with two shots, one low in the stomach and the second, a mortal wound in the chest. Lying on the ground, the General was told that the French had broken, he gave several orders, then turned on his side and said "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace", and passed away.

Within days, on September 18, 1759, the garrison in Québec surrendered. It was the turning point of the war, and by the next year New France had been conquered by the British after the attack on Montreal.

The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763 to end the war and gave possession of parts of New France to Great Britain, including Canada and the eastern half of French Louisiana

A day of thanksgiving was observed in England for General Wolfe's capture of Québec and the defeat of the French at the Battle of Minden in North Germany in the midst of concerns regarding the French navy's plans to invade England and Scotland.

Wolfe's body was returned to Britain on HMS Royal William and interred in the family vault in St Alfege Church, Greenwich alongside his father. The funeral service took place on November 20, 1759.

 In 1770 the American-born artist Benjamin West (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) painted a revolutionary picture of Wolfe's death at the siege of Québec with everyone dressed in military uniform rather than depicted (adopting the convention) in the clothing of the Ancient Greeks or Romans. West's Death of Wolfe was a great success heralded a new realism in art.

The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West