argued that, by making a landing there, the British could
cut off Montcalm's communications with Three Rivers and
Montreal, from which his army drew its supplies. Wolfe's
letter was dictated from his bed of sickness on the 26th.
The brigadiers answered him on the 29th. Saunders talked
it all over with him on the 31st. Before this the fate
of Canada had been an affair of weeks. Now it was a matter
of days; for the morrow would dawn on the very last
possible month of the siege--September.

After his talk with Saunders Wolfe wrote his last letter
home to his mother, telling her of his desperate plight:

The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can't in conscience
put the whole army to risk. My antagonist has wisely
shut himself up in inaccessible entrenchments, so that
I can't get at him without spilling a torrent of blood,
and that perhaps to little purpose. The Marquis de
Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad
soldiers and I am at the head of a small number of
good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight
him; but the wary old fellow avoids an action, doubtful
of the behaviour of his army. People must be of the
profession to understand the disadvantages and
difficulties we labour under, arising from the uncommon
natural strength of the country.

On September 2 he wrote his last letter to Pitt. He had
asked the doctors to 'patch him up,' saying that if they
could make him fit for duty for only the next few days