Live-blogging the siege of Quebec+250 #60

Friday, August 31, 1759. Wolfe, still struggling with the fever that laid him low last week, expresses his gloom and discouragement in what proves to be his last letter to his mother.

No personal evils worse than defeats and disappointments have fallen upon me. The enemy puts nothing at risk and I can’t in consequence 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.

Except for the relative size of the armies -- hardly so unfavorable to Wolfe -- all this is a precise summary of the situation.