On 23 January 1758, James Wolfe was appointed as a Brigadier General, and sent with Major General Jeffrey Amherst in the fleet of Admiral Boscawen to lay siege to Fortress of Louisbourg in New France (located in present-day Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia). Louisbourg stood near the mouth of the St Lawrence River, and its capture was considered essential to any attack on Canada from the east. An expedition the previous year had failed to seize the town, because of a French naval build-up. For 1758 Pitt sent a much larger Royal Navy force to accompany Amherst's troops. Wolfe distinguished himself in preparations for the assault, the initial landing and in the aggressive advance of siege batteries. The French capitulated in June of that year in the Siege of Louisbourg (1758). He then participated in the Expulsion of the Acadians in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Campaign (1758).