towards land, till
they swung round and stranded. Here, after venting their fury for a
while, they subsided into quiet conflagration, which lasted till
morning. Vaudreuil watched the result of his experiment from the steeple
of the church at Beauport; then returned, dejected, to Quebec.

Wolfe longed to fight his enemy; but his sagacious enemy would not
gratify him. From the heights of Beauport, the rock of Quebec, or the
summit of Cape Diamond, Montcalm could look down on the river and its
shores as on a map, and watch each movement of the invaders. He was
hopeful, perhaps confident; and for a month or more he wrote almost
daily to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga, in a cheerful, and often a jocose
vein, mingling orders and instructions with pleasantries and bits of
news. Yet his vigilance was unceasing. "We pass every night in bivouac,
or else sleep in our clothes. Perhaps you are doing as much, my dear
Bourlamaque."[714]

[Footnote 714: _Montcalm a Bourlamaque, 27 Juin, 1759._ All these
letters are before me.]

Of the two commanders, Vaudreuil was the more sanguine, and professed
full faith that all would go well. He too corresponded with Bourlamaque,
to whom he gave his opinion, founded on the reports of deserters, that
Wolfe had no chance of success unless Amherst should come to his aid.
This he pronounced impossible; and he expressed a strong desire that the
English would attack him, "so that we may rid ourselves of them at
once."[715] He was courageous, except in the immediate presence of
danger, and failed only when the crisis came.

[Footnote 715: _Vaudreuil a Bourlamaque, 8 Juillet, 1759._]

Wolfe, held in check at every other point, had one movement in his
power. He could seize the heights of Point Levi, opposite the city; and
this, along with his occupation of the Island of Orleans, would give him
command of the Basin of Quebec. Thence also he could fire on the place
across the St. Lawrence, which is here less than a mile wide. The
movement was begun on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when, shivering
in a north wind and a sharp frost, a part of Monckton's brigade was
ferried over to Beaumont, on the south shore, and the rest followed in
the morning. The rangers had a brush with a party of Canadians, whom
they drove off, and the regulars then landed unopposed. Monckton ordered
a proclamation, signed by Wolfe, to be posted on the door of the parish
church. It called on the Canadians, in peremptory terms, to