Wolfe, James

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Wolfe, James

WOLFE, JAMES. (1727–1759). British general. Born on 2 January 1727, Wolfe was commissioned second lieutenant in the First Marines in 1741 and exchanged into the Twelfth Foot in 1742. At Dettingen (Germany) on 27 June 1743 he came to the attention of the Duke of Cumberland (Prince William Augustus). Wolfe's subsequent promotions, to lieutenant (July 1743), captain in the Fourth Foot (1744), and brigade major in Flanders (1745), were due to the duke's patronage. Wolfe served as a staff officer against the Jacobites in the battles of Falkirk and Culloden, and was badly wounded in the battle at Laffeld on 21 June 1746. He became a major in the Twentieth Foot in 1749 and its lieutenant colonel in March 1750.

As commandant of the Twentieth Foot, Wolfe developed an improved, simplified system of platoon firing. He also introduced a new bayonet technique, in which the musket with the fixed blade was not hefted overhead but levelled at the hip, thus making it an effective offensive weapon. Noticing that French military writers were interested in the technique of attacking in massed column, Wolfe worked out the most effective defence against it: a massed battalion volley delivered in line, followed by a bayonet charge. These innovations, adopted for the whole army in 1764, were to have a significant impact on the infantry's performance in the War of American Independence and beyond. In 1757, returning from a staff posting with the failed expedition against Rochefort, on the French coast, he began to work out a manual for combined operations, drawing on his recent experience of what not to do.

On 23 January 1758 Wolfe was made brigadier general in North America to serve under Jeffery Amherst in the Louisburg expedition. Wolfe led the light infantry assault that enabled the army to get safely ashore, and his brigade's batteries made the breach that forced the garrison to surrender on 27 July. It was now too late in the year to move on Quebec, and the news of General James Abercromby's fiasco at Ticonderoga sent Amherst hurrying back to New York. Wolfe promptly took himself home and obtained command of the Quebec expedition, with the rank of major general in North America, on 30 December 1758. At the siege of Quebec he displayed major weaknesses in troop management, and the difficulties of implementing his initial plan of attack made him look hesitant and uncertain.

However, Wolfe's death in battle on 13 September 1759, after the famous night climb to the Heights of Abraham, made him an iconic national hero. Two dramatic, but historically inaccurate paintings depicted his death, and his statue still looks out over Greenwich in London, where he was buried. Yet his most important legacy was his system of battlefield tactics, which carried the British Army through the American Revolution and at last immortalized a far greater commander: Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and victor of Waterloo.

SEE ALSO Abercromby, James (1706–1781); Plains of Abraham (13 September 1759).