I tried to learn the river’s vocabulary but it was scummed with vegetal dust that blew off the alders and bulrushes, and its wide beaches whispered to their small sister-shores commanding them to grow more incoherent the harder I cocked my ear. My incomprehension went on for days. On early autumn mornings the gold straw bore tinkling ice-beads, which I took to be the river warning me: “Watch out, Wolfe—my prettiest ice begins like sequins but soon forms lace that grows, thickens and chokes.”

The curse of history is its implication, when viewed in hindsight, that any given day in a soldier’s life contains certainty. Whereas, in the moment, the only thing certain about the Saint Lawrence River was that it resisted anyone foolhardy enough to try and conquer Quebec.

The river let me hear what it wanted me to hear. It flung prickles of alienation mixed with brackish mist from its estuaries—the honking of its geese threaded itself among a reek of eel-spawn and bladder-wrack while my men grew mute, impatient.

My men agitated to alight on the Heights of Abraham and tear into French ground as if it were bread: they were lustful, battering the French as salt wind punished the few birches along the river, ripping their white dresses. My men wished me to be what I am not: decisive, more cunning than the river, master of tides. Certainty is what they craved, and I excelled in its opposite and still do. Rather than pounce blind, I wait and see. Men loathe this.

When did I first notice the little beach at L’Anse au Foulon?

That was the happy part. The early part. The part where I still had a confidant on whom I could rely. I spied the sweet landing-spot earlier than anyone thinks. I took Sam Holland upriver with me out of frustration at not being told the condition of that shoreline. The navy did not exert itself toward providing the army with intelligence. It almost seemed to glory in my inability to find a way to attack Quebec from upriver. Too much wind and tide, they said. Stony cliffs. Spruce roots to trip your men into dislodging rockslides that will send them flying down the banks….

Meanwhile, my men wanted me to feel hatred for the French. My men’s derision and the iron in the land were corrosive. The land and the men stood against me, but one soldier, Sam Holland, was a loyal friend. I sensed early that he was a person who understood there is exhilaration in shifting plans and in treacherous tides. Sam Holland knew the power of a secret scheme of last resort.