It was the evening of the 12th of Sept., 1759. The French troops were on the alert,—the British ready. The evening was calm and fine and the occasion full of solemnity as Wolfe embarked in a boat to visit some of his posts. As the oars dipped softly in the stream, and the quiet dusk of the autumn twilight hid the grim signs of war and brought out the peaceful beauty of the scene, he thought of the morrow—that where
"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,"
would be rent by the roar of cannon, the flash of bloody steel and the cries of the wounded and dying.
Feeling perhaps a shrinking from the great crisis which the dawn would bring, he repeated to the officers and midshipmen within hearing a number of the verses from the most finished poem in the English language, Grey's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," and which had appeared a short time before. Probably the lines on which he lingered longest were:—
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
The last line was, alas! prophetic in his own case, and he may have had some premonition of it, for turning to his listeners, who were to share with him victory or defeat, he said with a wistful pathos in his young voice, "I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow."
He did not dream that for what that morrow would bring, his name, with that of the poet he loved, would be carven among those of England's great men in Westminster Abbey—
"Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."
Landing in a ravine (Wolfe's Cove), which he had located by the use of a glass—with the strategic venture at which all the world has since wondered—in the dark hours of the same night, he, at the head of the famous Fraser Highlanders, placed his force on the Plains of Abraham, each man knowing it was victory or death, as there was no possibility of retreat.
The intelligence of the landing of the British troops was first brought to the Governor-General, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and he had the task of communicating the unwelcome news to Montcalm, who had hurried from his quarters on the ramparts to ascertain what was the meaning of the firing above the town.