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82 CANADIAN GUIDE BOOK. It being absolutely necessary for the combined operations of the two services that the English should possess the command of the basin, General Moncktou, second in command, was detached on the night of the 29th with four battalions, with orders to land at Beaumont, and to clear the south shore from that village to Pointe- Levi, which post he was to occupy and fortify, a duty which he accomplished with little opposition. Here he erected batteries and works, the remains of which may be traced at the present day. In the meantime Colonel Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, established himself at the western point of the Isle of Orleans, where he erected works for the defence of the magazines, stores, and hospitals. M ontcalm, who too late perceived the importance of the works at Pointe Levi, sent a corps of sixteen hundred men against them ; but these troops, unluckily for themselves and for the English Gen eral, who was anxious to defeat so large a detachment, fell into confusion, and, having fired upon each other instead of upon the enemy, returned in utter discomfiture. General Wolfe, perceiving that the ground to the eastward of the Fall of Montmorenci, on which rested the left flank of the French army, was higher lhan that on the enemy’s side, determined to take possession of it; and, having passed the North Channel, he encamped there on the 9th July, not without severe skirmishing and considerable loss. Here he erected batteries which greatly galled the left of the entrenchments, and conceived the design of attacking the French in their entrenchments. This attack, which, looking at the difficulties of the ground, appears to have been carefully con sidered and planned with judgment, took place on the Slst July. It failed through want of caution and excess of courage on the part of the grenadiers, although the grounding of the boats upon the ledge, some distance from the shore, was doubtless the primary cause of the disaster. The return of our loss at the battle of Montmorenci is stated to have been one liundred and eighty-two lulled and six hundred and fifty wounded. The failure at Montmorenci had made a deep impression upon the mind of Wolfe. He had a spirit impatient of anticipated ccn-