The scheme
was similar to that of the heights of St. Michel. It seemed desperate,
but so did all the rest; and if by chance it should succeed, the gain
was far greater than could follow any success below the town. Wolfe
embraced it at once.
Not that he saw much hope in it. He knew that every chance was against
him. Disappointment in the past and doom in the future, the pain and
exhaustion of disease, toils, and anxieties "too great," in the words of
Burke, "to be supported by a delicate constitution, and a body unequal
to the vigorous and enterprising soul that it lodged," threw him at
times into deep dejection. By those intimate with him he was heard to
say that he would not go back defeated, "to be exposed to the censure
and reproach of an ignorant populice." In other moods he felt that he
ought not to sacrifice what was left of his diminished army in vain
conflict with hopeless obstacles. But his final resolve once taken, he
would not swerve from it. His fear was that he might not be able to
lead his troops in person. "I know perfectly well you cannot cure me,"
he said to his physician; "but pray make me so that I may be without
pain for a few days, and able to do my duty: that is all I want."
In a despatch which Wolfe had written to Pitt, Admiral Saunders
conceived that he had ascribed to the fleet more than its just share in
the disaster at Montmorenci; and he sent him a letter on the subject.
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