Meanwhile Drucour had made several sorties against the
British front, while Boishebert had attacked their rear
with a few hundred Indians, Acadians, and Canadians.
Boishebert's attack was simply brushed aside by the
rearguard of Amherst's overwhelming force. The American
Rangers ought to have defeated it themselves, without
the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of
men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years
before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been
enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with
some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel
and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them
in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come,
which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille.
These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most
contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There
is no depending upon 'em in action. They fall down dead
in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers
and all.'

Drucour's sorties, made by good French regulars, were
much more serious than Boishebert's feeble, irregular
attack. On the night of July 8, while Montcalm's
Ticonderogan heroes were resting on their hard-won field
a thousand miles inland, Drucour's best troops crept out
unseen and charged the British right. Lord Dundonald and
several of his men were killed, while the rest were driven
back to the second approach, where desperate work was
done with the bayonet in the dark. But Wolfe commanded
that part of the line, and his supports were under arms