James Wolfe was a frail, brave soldier who was obsessed with glory. (As portrayed by Robert Joy in Canada: A People's History)

General James Wolfe wrote to his mother of his frustration. "My antagonist has wisely shut himself up, in inaccessible entrenchments, so that I can't get at him, without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers & I am at the head of a small number of good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight him – but the wary old fellow avoids an action; doubtful of the behavior of his army."

Wolfe had to get his troops back to England before the ice made the St.
Lawrence impassable. While he was waiting for starvation to draw his enemy out, he was enduring constant skirmishes, mostly with Indians that resulted in regular casualties. The French were being bombed into numbness and the British were being slowly bled. If Montcalm could simply endure, he would win this war of attrition.

The British camp was confused and divided. Wolfe was not only very sick, in bed for days and stewed in medications, but when he wasn't plagued by illness, he was indecisive. The summer was half over. Wolfe couldn't decide where to attack and he faced opposition even within his own camp.

Wolfe's three brigadiers were members of the aristocracy. James Murray, Robert Monckton and George Townshend viewed their leader as a career officer of the middle class and they questioned whether he had the will or imagination for the job.
Townshend drew caricatures of Wolfe, whose misshapen form lent itself to the job. One of the unflattering sketches was passed around the mess tent, and was finally intercepted by Wolfe himself. He glanced at his twisted likeness and crumpled the paper. "If I live," he said, "this shall be inquired into; but we must beat the enemy first."

Townshend wasn't found out, but his discontent was obvious. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: "I never served so disagreeable campaign as this. Our unequal Force has reduced our Operations to a scene of Skirmishing, Cruelty & Devastation. It is War of the Worst Shape.
A Scene I ought not to be in... General Wolfe's health is but very bad. His generalship, in my poor opinion – is not a bit better, this only between us."

Wolfe had Montcalm's infuriating inaction on the one side, while on the other were the doubts of his officers and the steady rebellions of his body. The brigadiers thought Wolfe should land upriver and initiate a two-pronged attack at Pointe aux Trembles and Deschambault. Wolfe waffled. At one point he ordered three different actions in the course of five hours, cancelling each as soon as he had ordered it.