Wolfe was a very angry and disgusted man. Yet, though
this joint expedition was a disgraceful failure, he had
learned some useful lessons, which he was presently to
turn to good account. He saw, at least, what such
expeditions should not attempt; and that a general should
act boldly, though wisely, with the fleet. More than
this, he had himself made a plan which his generals were
too timid to carry out; and this plan was so good that
Pitt, now in supreme control for the next four years,
made a note of it and marked him down for promotion and
command.

Both came sooner than any one could have expected. Pitt
was sick of fleets and armies that did nothing but hold
councils of war and then come back to say that the enemy
could not be safely attacked. He made up his mind to send
out real fighters with the next joint expedition. So in
1758 he appointed Wolfe as the junior of the three
brigadier-generals under Amherst, who was to join Admiral
Boscawen--nicknamed 'Old Dreadnought'--in a great expedition
meant to take Louisbourg for good and all.

Louisbourg was the greatest fortress in America. It was
in the extreme east of Canada, on the island of Cape
Breton, near the best fishing-grounds, and on the flank
of the ship channel into the St Lawrence. A fortress
there, in which French fleets could shelter safely, was
like a shield for New France and a sword against New
England. In 1745, just before the outbreak of the Jacobite
rebellion in Scotland, an army of New Englanders under