Two new toasts were
going the rounds of the Service: 'Here's to the eye of
a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe!' and 'Here's to British
colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in
America!' Of course they were standing toasts. The men
who drank them already felt the presage of Pitt's great
Empire Year of 1759.
The last two weeks in May and the first in June were full
of glamour in crowded, stirring Louisbourg. There was
Wolfe's picked army of nine thousand men, with Saunders's
mighty fleet of fifty men-of-war, mounting two thousand
guns, comprising a quarter of the whole Royal Navy, and
convoying more than two hundred transports and provision
ships; all coming and going, landing, embarking, drilling,
dividing, massing; every one expectant of glorious results
and eager to begin. Who wouldn't be for the front at the
climax of a war like this?
Then came the final orders issued in Louisbourg. '1st
June, 1759. The Troops land no more. The flat-bottomed
boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to
sail at the first signal.
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