se, tip-tilted heavenwards, formed with his other
features the point of an obtuse triangle. His hair was fiery red, his
shoulders narrow, his legs a pair of attenuated spindle-shanks; he was a
chronic invalid. But between his fiery poll and his plebeian and
upturned nose flashed a pair of eyes--keen, piercing, and steady--worthy
of Caesar or of Napoleon. In warlike genius he was on land as Nelson was
on sea, chivalrous, fiery, intense. A "magnetic" man, with a strange
gift of impressing himself on the imagination of his soldiers, and of so
penetrating the whole force he commanded with his own spirit that in his
hands it became a terrible and almost resistless instrument of war. The
gift for choosing fit agents is one of the highest qualities of genius;
and it is a sign of Pitt's piercing insight into character that, for the
great task of overthrowing the French power in Canada, he chose what
seemed to commonplace vision a rickety, hypochondriacal, and very
youthful colonel like Wolfe.

Pitt's strategy for the American campaign was spacious, not to say
grandiose. A line of strong French posts, ranging from Duquesne, on the
Ohio, to Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, held the English settlements on
the coast girdled, as in an iron band, from all extension westward; while
Quebec, perched in almost impregnable strength on the frowning cliffs
which look down on the St. Lawrence, was the centre of the French power
in Canada. Pitt's plan was that Amherst, with 12,000 men, should capture
Ticonderoga; Prideaux, with another powerful force, should carry
Montreal; and Wolfe, with 7000 men, should invest Quebec, where Amherst
and Prideaux were to join him. Two-thirds of this great plan broke down.
Amherst and Prideaux, indeed, succeeded in their local operations, but
neither was able to join Wolfe, who had to carry out with one army the
task for which three were designed.

On June 21, 1759, the advanced squadron of the fleet conveying Wolfe came
working up the St. Lawrence. To deceive the enemy they flew the white
flag, and, as the eight great ships came abreast of the Island of
Orleans, the good people of Quebec persuaded themselves it was a French
fleet bringing supplies and reinforcements. The bells rang a welcome;
flags waved. Boats put eagerly off to greet the approaching ships. But
as these swung round at their anchorage the white flag of France
disappeared, and the red ensign of Great Britain flew in its place. The