n case of
separate attack. Yet it was in vain that he tempted Montcalm to
battle. For weeks his guns roared challenge across the Montmorency;
but the cautious French General only shrugged his shoulders and
remarked: "Let him amuse himself where he is. If we drive him off he
may go to some place where he can do us harm." To discover this
vulnerable spot Wolfe would have risked much, as appears from his
daring instructions of the 18th of July. On this day the _Sutherland_
and several small frigates ran the gauntlet of the city batteries, and
racing through the hail of lead and iron falling from a hundred guns
upon the ramparts, they reached Cap Rouge above Quebec.

To the French the impossible had happened. Montcalm, therefore,
hastily detailed a small force to defend the cliffs; and the right
wing of the army under Bougainville was charged with the protection of
the city upon its flank, or landward side. To Wolfe, however, who
himself made the hazardous voyage in the _Sutherland_, the result of
the reconnaissance was not cheering. No point upon those rugged cliffs
seemed to offer a favourable landing; and he came back to his camp on
the Montmorency more than ever convinced that Montcalm's army could be
defeated only by a direct assault upon its strong intrenchments. This
desperate enterprise he essayed on the last day of July.

When the tide runs out past the Isle of Orleans, it leaves a wide
sandy beach at the foot of the cliffs between Beauport and
Montmorency, the mouth of the latter river also being hardly more than
knee-deep at ebb-tide. Aware of these conditions, the French had
erected a strong redoubt at the edge of the strand, and posted a large
force of musketeers in the intrenchments capping the heights above it.
This was the point which Wolfe selected for attack.

In the morning at high tide the _Centurion_, of sixty-four guns, took
up a position near the Montmorency ford and opened fire upon the
French redoubt. During this movement two armed transports detailed to
second her cannonade, running too close upon the shore, were stranded
with the receding tide. At the same time, the batteries of Wolfe's
camp across the river were pounding the enemy's flank. Towards noon
five thousand British soldiers pressed towards the point of attack;
some in boats from Point Levi and Orleans, some crossing the ford from
Townshend's camp. The first to reach the spot were thirteen companies
of grenadiers and a detachment of Ro