Here Died Wolfe Victorious

Apropos "Kipling's" post below, the inscription on the obelisk at Quebec City, erected to commemorate the battle on the Plains of Abraham no longer reads: "Here Died Wolfe Victorious." Now it simply reads: "Here Died Wolfe."


The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. Oil on canvas, 1770.
The site where Wolfe purportedly fell is marked by a column surmounted by a helmet and sword. An inscription at its base now reads, in French and English, "Here died Wolfe - September 13th, 1759." It replaces a large stone which had been placed there by British troops to mark the spot.

Wolfe's defeat of the French led to the British capture of New France, and his "hero's death" made the Wolfe name a legend. The Wolfe legend led to the famous painting above and the opening line of the patriotic Canadian anthem, "The Maple Leaf Forever", it too all but wiped from English Canadian memory to accommodate (appease) French Canadians insided a united Canada.

Historian Francis Parkman described the death of Wolfe this way:

They asked him [Wolfe] if he would have a surgeon; but he shook his head, and answered that all was over with him. His eyes closed with the torpor of approaching death, and those around sustained his fainting form. Yet they could not withhold their gaze from the wild turmoil before them, and the charging ranks of their companions rushing though the line of sire and smoke.

"See how they run." one of the officers exclaimed, as the French fled in confusion before the leveled bayonets.

"Who run?" demanded Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep.

"The enemy, sire," was the reply; "they give way everywhere."

"Then," said the dying general, "tell Colonel River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I die contented," he murmured; and, turning on his side, he calmly breathed his last breath.