, animating the
troops, observing everything, and directing everything; but now the pale
face and tall lean form were seen no more, and the rumor spread that the
General was dangerously ill. He had in fact been seized by an access of
the disease that had tortured him for some time past; and fever had
followed. His quarters were at a French farmhouse in the camp at
Montmorenci; and here, as he lay in an upper chamber, helpless in bed,
his singular and most unmilitary features haggard with disease and drawn
with pain, no man could less have looked the hero. But as the needle,
though quivering, points always to the pole, so, through torment and
languor and the heats of fever, the mind of Wolfe dwelt on the capture
of Quebec. His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had
so far subsided on the twenty-fifth that Knox wrote in his Diary of that
day: "His Excellency General Wolfe is on the recovery, to the
inconceivable joy of the whole army." On the twenty-ninth he was able
to write or dictate a letter to the three brigadiers, Monckton,
Townshend, and Murray: "That the public service may not suffer by the
General's indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will meet and consult
together for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best
method to attack the enemy." The letter then proposes three plans, all
bold to audacity. The first was to send a part of the army to ford the
Montmorenci eight or nine miles above its mouth, march through the
forest, and fall on the rear of the French at Beauport, while the rest
landed and attacked them in front. The second was to cross the ford at
the mouth of the Montmorenci and march along the strand, under the
French intrenchments, till a place could be found where the troops might
climb the heights. The third was to make a general attack from boats at
the Beauport flats. Wolfe had before entertained two other plans, one of
which was to scale the heights at St. Michel, about a league above
Quebec; but this he had abandoned on learning that the French were there
in force to receive him. The other was to storm the Lower Town; but this
also he had abandoned, because the Upper Town, which commanded it, would
still remain inaccessible.

The brigadiers met in consultation, rejected the three plans proposed in
the letter, and advised that an attempt should be made to gain a footing
on the north shore above the town, place the army between Montcalm and
his base of supply, an