Wolfe was born at Westerham, in Kent, on January 2, 1727, and was therefore not thirty-three years old when he was killed at Quebec in September, 1759. He was the son of a soldier, and received his first commission before he was fifteen. He was present at Dettingen, and at Culloden; and, subsequently to the latter battle, after an interval of fighting in the Netherlands, where he distinguished himself at the battle of Laffeldt, he was stationed for a considerable time in Scotland. Service in the Highlands, it may be noted, in Jacobite times, was not bad training for service in North America. In September, 1757, after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he took part in the expedition against Rochefort, to the south of La Rochelle, on the west coast of France--an enterprise as utterly barren of results as was the Duke of Buckingham's venture against the same area of coast when Charles I was King. Lord Howe and Wolfe {290} were among the few who gained any credit from the expedition. In the following year, Wolfe served at Louisbourg. Horace Walpole writes of him: 'Ambition, activity, industry, passion for the service, were conspicuous in Wolfe. He seemed to breathe for nothing but fame, and lost no moments in qualifying himself to compass his object.'[2] These words are partly true, but do not tell the whole truth. Wolfe was ambitious, active, and industrious, but he cared for more than fame alone. His dramatic death in the hour of victory, while he was still very young, makes it impossible to form an adequate estimate of his real worth as a soldier; but all that is known of him points to his having been, in spite of persistent ill health, a great military genius, and a rare leader of men. He seems to have resembled Nelson in his fighting qualities, and to have had the same lovable nature, coupled with a higher standard of life. Like Nelson, in warfare he always took the offensive if possible--took it, as at Quebec, in spite of smaller numbers and a less favourable position. 'An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French,' were his words to Amherst in a letter written after the taking of Louisbourg.[3] [Footnote 2: Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of King George II_ (1847 ed.), vol. iii, p. 171.] [Footnote 3: Louisbourg, Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright, p. 457).]