Fall of Louisbourg

July 26, 1758

James Wolfe led red-coated infantry ashore through Atlantic surf under French cannon and took Cape Breton's fortress after a seven-week siege. Louisbourg had guarded the St. Lawrence; with it gone, Quebec was next. Wolfe, thin, consumptive, and strange, became the war's rising star. Pitt ordered the fortress demolished stone by stone so that France could never again use it to menace British North America.