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DESCRIPTION OF PRINT SUBJECT: General James Wolfe (January 2, 1727–September 13, 1759) was a British general, remembered mainly for his role in establishing British rule in Canada. Wolfe was born in Westerham, Kent, England, the son of General Edward Wolfe. From his earliest years he was destined for a military career, entering his father's regiment at the age of 14. Wolfe fought at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743. He served in Scotland under the Duke of Cumberland in the campaign to defeat the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and took part in the Battle of Culloden in 1746. At the Battle of Culloden he refused to carry out an order of the Duke of Cumberland, to shoot a wounded highlander stating his honour was worth more than his commission. This act may have been a cause for his later popularity among his Royal Highland troops. He returned to Germany and in July 1747 was wounded at the Battle of Lauffeld. Wolfe fought as a colonel under Jeffrey Amherst at the siege of Louisbourg on June 12, 1758, during the French and Indian War. The prime minister, William Pitt, chose him to lead the British assault on Quebec the following year. The British army laid siege to the city for three months. During that time, Wolfe issued a written document, known as Wolfe's Manifesto, to the French-Canadian civilians, as a part of his strategy of psychological intimidation. In March 1759, prior to arriving at Quebec, Wolfe had written to Amherst: "If, by accident in the river, by the enemy’s resistance, by sickness or slaughter in the army, or, from any other cause, we find that Quebec is not likely to fall into our hands (persevering however to the last moment), I propose to set the town on fire with shells, to destroy the harvest, houses and cattle, both above and below, to send off as many Canadians as possible to Europe and to leave famine and desolation behind me; but we must teach these scoundrels to make war in a more gentleman like manner." After an extensive yet unsuccessful shelling of the city, Wolfe then led a very bold and risky amphibious landing at the base of the cliffs west of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River. His army with two small cannon, scaled the cliffs early on the morning of September 13, 1759, surprising the French under the command of the Marquis de Montcalm, who thought the cliffs would be unclimbable. The French, faced with the possibility that the British would haul more cannon up the cliffs and knock down the city's remaining walls, fought the British on the Plains of Abraham. The French were defeated, but Wolfe was shot in the chest and died just as the battle was won. Wolfe's victory at Quebec enabled an assault on the French at Montreal the following year. With the fall of Montreal, French rule in North America came to an end.
Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, etching, lithograph, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, and NOT blocks of steel or wood or any other material. “ENGRAVINGS”, the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or “engravings” were created by the intaglio process of etching the negative of the image into a block of steel, copper, wood etc, and then when inked and pressed onto paper, a print image was created. These prints or engravings were usually inserted into books, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone lithographs. They often had a tissue guard or onion skin frontis to protect them from transferring their ink to the opposite page and were usually on much thicker quality woven rag stock paper than the regular prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper. | |
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