| and Townshend. |
Townshend, too, went home, his enemies said, to exaggerate his own merits and belittle Wolfe's memory. An anonymous letter to 'an honourable brigadier-general,' attributed to Junius among others,22 appeared in the following year, and attacked him with bitterness, some of which he probably deserved. He passed into political life, and as Viceroy of Ireland achieved a doubtful repute.
22 See the Grenville Papers, 1852, 3rd ed. Introductory notes relating to Lord Temple and the authorship of Junius at the beginning of vol. iii, pp. lxxxviii-xc.
| Wolfe's body brought to England. |
Wolfe's body was brought to England, and buried where his father had been laid earlier in the year, in the vaults of Greenwich parish church. A monument to him, voted by Parliament, stands in Westminster Abbey, and his name lives, and will for ever live, in the hearts of men.
| Cotton's letters to Grenville. |
The news of his victory and death, and of the fall of Quebec, reached England on October 17. It came but two or three days after his latest dispatches, which gave little hope of success. There are two interesting letters among the Grenville Papers, written to Grenville by the Rev. Nathaniel Cotton, from on board the Princess Amelia at Île Madame in the St. Lawrence. The first is dated August 27 to September 6; the second bears the date of September 20. The first, repeating former letters, is not hopeful. It points out the insufficiency of Wolfe's force, the necessity of co-operation on the part of Amherst; and it refers to 'unrevealed causes' militating against the enterprise, which may be taken to mean want of harmony between Wolfe and Townshend. The later letter begins with the following words: 'I have the satisfaction to acquaint you that through the smiles of Providence we are in safe and quiet possession of Quebec.'23
23 Grenville Papers, vol. i, pp. 318-26.
| Reception of the news in England. |
Very dramatic was the revulsion of feeling in England, when all was known. No submarine cables then told the story of the war from day to day. Only a few dispatches and letters at long intervals were brought over the Atlantic, recording at first slow progress, then reverse, disappointment, and the General's sickness and despondency. The rock of Quebec seemed still impregnable; and, as the bright summer waned into autumn, public confidence gave place to gloom. Then in mid-October, when to North American lands the Indian summer gives a second brightness, tidings came from over the sea that the victory was won, and that the price paid for it was the life of Wolfe. There followed, as Burke well said, a 'mourning triumph.'24 Joy was sobered by the sense of loss, and the picture of a desolate home appealed, as it always appeals, to Englishmen's minds. They thought of the mother, lately widowed, now childless, whose sickly son had been her joy and pride; and many, we may not doubt, thought also of the French home, whose master had gone out and came not again.