The Winning of Canada | Page 7

hinder legs and threw me; so I was obliged to do the duty of an
adjutant all that and the next day on foot, in a pair of heavy boots.
Three days after the battle I got the horse again, and he is almost well.
Shortly after Dettingen Wolfe was appointed adjutant and promoted to
a lieutenancy. In the next year he was made a captain in the 4th Foot
while his brother became a lieutenant in the 12th. After this they had
very few chances of meeting; and Edward, who had caught a deadly

chill, died alone in Flanders, not yet seventeen years old. Wolfe wrote
home to his mother:
Poor Ned wanted nothing but the satisfaction of seeing his dearest
friends to leave the world with the greatest tranquillity. It gives me
many uneasy hours when I reflect on the possibility there was of my
being with him before he died. God knows it was not apprehending the
danger the poor fellow was in; and even that would not have hindered it
had I received the physician's first letter. I know you won't be able to
read this without shedding tears, as I do writing it. Though it is the
custom of the army to sell the deceased's effects, I could not suffer it.
We none of us want, and I thought the best way would be to bestow
them on the deserving whom he had an esteem for in his lifetime. To
his servant--the most honest and faithful man I ever knew--I gave all
his clothes. I gave his horse to his friend Parry. I know he loved Parry;
and for that reason the horse will be taken care of. His other horse I
keep myself. I have his watch, sash, gorget, books, and maps, which I
shall preserve to his memory. He was an honest and good lad, had lived
very well, and always discharged his duty with the cheerfulness
becoming a good officer. He lived and died as a son of you two should.
There was no part of his life that makes him dearer to me than what you
so often mentioned--he pined after me.
It was this pining to follow Wolfe to the wars that cost poor Ned his
life. But did not Wolfe himself pine to follow his father?
The next year, 1745, the Young Pretender, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie,'
raised the Highland clans on behalf of his father, won several battles,
and invaded England, in the hope of putting the Hanoverian Georges
off the throne of Great Britain and regaining it for the exiled Stuarts.
The Duke of Cumberland was sent to crush him; and with the duke
went Wolfe. Prince Charlie's army retreated and was at last brought to
bay on Culloden Moor, six miles from Inverness. The Highlanders
were not in good spirits after their long retreat before the duke's army,
which enjoyed an immense advantage in having a fleet following it
along the coast with plenty of provisions, while the prince's wretched
army was half starved. We may be sure the lesson was not lost on

Wolfe. Nobody understood better than he that the fleet is the first thing
to consider in every British war. And nobody saw a better example of
this than he did afterwards in Canada.
At daybreak on April 16, 1746, the Highlanders found the duke's army
marching towards Inverness, and drew up in order to prevent it. Both
armies halted, each hoping the other would make the mistake of
charging. At last, about one o'clock, the Highlanders in the centre and
right could be held back no longer. So eager were they to get at the
redcoats that most of them threw down their muskets without even
firing them, and then rushed on furiously, sword in hand. ''Twas for a
time,' said Wolfe, 'a dispute between the swords and bayonets, but the
latter was found by far the most destructable [sic] weapon.' No quarter
was given or taken on either side during an hour of desperate fighting
hand to hand. By that time the steady ranks of the redcoats, aided by
the cavalry, had killed five times as many as they had lost by the wild
slashing of the claymores. The Highlanders turned and fled. The Stuart
cause was lost for ever.
Again another year of fighting: this time in Holland, where the British,
Dutch, and Austrians under the Duke of Cumberland met the French at
the village of Laffeldt, on June 21, 1747. Wolfe was now a
brigade-major, which gave him the same sort of position in a brigade of
three battalions as an adjutant has in a single one; that is, he was a
smart junior officer picked out to help the brigadier in command by
seeing that orders were obeyed. The fight was