went to Spithead, embarked with Admiral Saunders in the ship “Neptune,” and set sail on the seventeenth of February.  In a few hours the whole squadron was at sea, the transports, the frigates, and the great line-of-battle ships, with their ponderous armament and their freight of rude humanity armed and trained for destruction; while on the heaving deck of the “Neptune,” wretched with sea-sickness and racked with pain, stood the gallant invalid who was master of it all.

The fleet consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, with frigates, sloops-of-war, and a great number of transports.  When Admiral Saunders arrived with his squadron off Louisbourg, he found the entrance blocked by ice, and was forced to seek harborage at Halifax.  The squadron of Admiral Holmes, which had sailed a few days earlier, proceeded to New York to take on board troops destined for the expedition, while the squadron of Admiral Durell steered for the St. Lawrence to intercept the expected ships from France.  In May the whole fleet, except the ten ships with Durell, was united in the harbor of Louisbourg.  Twelve thousand troops were to have been employed for the expedition; but several regiments expected from the West Indies were for some reason countermanded, while the accessions from New York and the Nova Scotia garrisons fell far short of the looked-for numbers.  Three weeks before leaving Louisbourg, Wolfe writes to his uncle Walter that he has an army of nine thousand men.  The actual number seems to have been somewhat less.[697] “Our troops are good,” he informs Pitt; “and if valor can make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed.”

[Footnote 697:  See Grenville Correspondence, I. 305.]

Three brigadiers, all in the early prime of life, held command under him:  Monckton, Townshend, and Murray.  They were all his superiors in birth, and one of them, Townshend, never forgot that he was so.  “George Townshend,” says Walpole, “has thrust himself again into the service; and, as far as wrongheadedness will go, is very proper for a hero."[698] The same caustic writer says further that he was of “a proud, sullen, and contemptuous temper,” and that he “saw everything in an ill-natured and ridiculous light."[699] Though his perverse and envious disposition made him a difficult colleague, Townshend had both talents and energy; as also had Monckton, the same officer who commanded at the capture of Beausejour in 1755.  Murray, too, was well matched to the work in hand, in spite of some lingering remains of youthful rashness.

[Footnote 698:  Horace Walpole, Letters III. 207 (ed.  Cunningham, 1857).]

[Footnote 699:  Ibid. George II., II. 345.]

On the sixth of June the last ship of the fleet sailed out of Louisbourg harbor, the troops cheering and the officers drinking to the toast, “British colors on every French fort, port, and garrison in America.”  The ships that had gone before lay to till the whole fleet was reunited, and then all steered together for the St. Lawrence.  From the headland of Cape Egmont, the Micmac hunter, gazing far out over the shimmering sea, saw the horizon flecked with their canvas wings, as they bore northward on their errand of havoc.