On his part, Wolfe made several futile attacks upon the Beauport redoubts. The position was, however, too strong for him to master, and in one assault (July 31) he lost half of his landing party--nearly five hundred killed, wounded, and missing.[34] This continued ill-success fretted Wolfe and at last quite disheartened him, for the season was rapidly wearing on, and winter sets in early at Quebec; moreover, nothing had yet been heard of Amherst. There was, indeed, some talk of waiting until another season. However, more and more British ships worked their way past the fort, and, by making frequent feints of landing at widely separated points, caused Bougainville great annoyance. Montcalm was accordingly obliged to weaken his lower forces by sending reinforcements to the plains west of the city. Thus, while Wolfe was pining, French uneasiness was growing, for the British were now intercepting supplies and reinforcements from both above and below, and Bougainville’s men were growing weary of constantly patrolling fifteen or twenty miles of cliffs.[35] Meanwhile, let us see how Amherst was faring. At the end of June the general assembled five thousand provincials and sixty-five hundred regulars at the head of Lake George. He had previously dispatched Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand regulars and provincials to reduce Niagara, and Brigadier Stanwix, who had been of Bradstreet’s party the year before, to succor Pittsburg, now in imminent danger from French bush-rangers and Indians who were swarming at Presque Isle, Le Bœuf, and Venango. Amherst himself moved slowly, it being July 21 before the army started northward upon the lake. Bourlamaque, whose sole purpose was to delay the British advance, lay at Ticonderoga with thirty-five hundred men, but on the twenty-sixth he blew up the fort and retreated in good order to Crown Point. On the British approaching that post he again fell back, this time to a strong position at Isle aux Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain, where, wrote Bourlamaque to a friend, “we are entrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of cannon.”[36] Amherst now deeming vessels essential, yet lacking ship-carpenters, it was the middle of September before his little navy was ready, and then he thought the season too far advanced for further operations.[37] Amherst’s advance had, however, induced Montcalm to defend Montreal, Lévis having been dispatched thither for this purpose.