Wolfe had now divided his army into three camps, each so far removed from the other that little or no help could be expected in 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.