199 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES COMMODORE BYRON MCCANDLESS FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY BY HELEN IVES GILCHRIST, M.A. Printed for the Fort Ticonderoga Museum BY HELEN IVES GILCHRIST, M.A. Printed for the Fort Ticonderoga Museum E m ^ CONTENTS CHAPTER I Champlain and the Iroquois CHAPTER II French and Indian War to 1758 16 CHAPTER III French and Indian Wars 1759 36 CHAPTER IV A Time of Peace, and the Revolution 49 CHAPTER V The Pell Family 98 Bibliography 100 ILLUSTRATIONS The Ruins of Ticonderoga, 1820 Frontispiece Saumel de Champlain 9 Map of Part of the Counties of Charlotte and Albany in the Province of New York 10 Peter Schuyler 13 Marquis de Yaudreuil 14 The Marquis de Montcalm 17 Due de Levis 18 Count de Bougainville 21 Major Robert Rogers 22 Map of the French Settlement in North America 25 Sir William Johnson, Baronet 26 George Augustus, Lord Howe 29 Major-General John Sullivan 30 A Perspective View of Lake George 33 Major-General John Stark 34 Major-General Israel Putnam 37 Plan of Ticonderoga, 1758 38-39 42nd Highlanders, The Black Watch 1751 43 Sir Jeffrey Amherst 44 Monument to Lieut. -Col. Roger Townshend in Westminster Abbey . ... 47 Reading the Declaration of Independence 48 Map of Ticonderoga, by John Trumbull. 1776 51 Major-General Charles Lee 52 Ethan Allen 55 Capture of Fort by Allen 56 Ethan Allen and Capt. de la Place 59 Facsimile of Letter of Ethan Allen to the Governor of Connecticut . . . 60-61 General Benedict Arnold 63 General Henry Knox . . 64 Major-General Philip Schuyler 67 Major-General Horatio Gates 68 General Benjamin Lincoln 71 Colonel Barry St. Leger 72 Battle of Valcour Island, 1776 75 General Richard Montgomery 76 General Antony Wayne 79 Major-General Arthur St. Clair 80 6 ILLUSTRATIONS General Thaddeus Kosciuszko 83 General John Stark 84 Sir John Burgoyne 87 Baron Reidesel 88 Major-General William Phillips 91 The Pavilion, Fort Ticonderoga, 1826 92 The King's Garden, Fort Ticonderoga 95 CHAPTER I CHAMPLAIN AND THE IROQUOIS THE history of Lake Champlain and of Ticonderoga is Indian French, English and most of all, American history. Old wars are often the beginnings of friendships when they are fairly fought. France and England of the eighteenth century had the same taste in land, the same appetite for explor- ing and settling, and finally the same trade interests to bring about a conflict. It was the French who came first into the region of the lakes. They had held successfully their colonies along the St. Lawrence, had made friends with the Indians thereabouts, and under the influence of that splendid adventurer, the Sieur de Champlain, became interested in pushing farther down from Quebec into that region of lakes and rivers which was then, simply the upper extremity of the territory of the Iroquois. It was in 1608 that Champlain came again to America. He had. from the king of France, a commission requiring him to explore, and to found a settlement. He spent the long winter at Quebec, learning, adapting himself to the ways of the woods, and making friends with the Algonquin Indians who trooped to the white men's town partly through idle curiosity, and partly as one makes a pilgrimage to something strange and marvellous. In the spring of 1609, the Indians asked for a practical test of the wonders they had seen and of the friendship the Frenchmen expressed for them. The white men shot with the arquebus, a matchlock or flintlock gun, and the effect of it was all that any Indian could desire for his enemies. With the firers of guns as allies, the Montagnais, a tribe of the Algonquins, felt that they could forever cow their old and formidable enemies, the Iroquois, who held the land to the south of them. The Hurons who were 7 8 their friends, had some slight connection racially with the Iro- quois, but on the whole were a tribe outside, and though friendly to the Montagnais, not totally to be relied upon as allies in war. The proposal that he go on the war path with the Montagnais was not displeasing to the Sieur de Champlain. With them he could penetrate farther into the woods than he could without them. He loved the dangers of exploring, and he had always in mind that he was advancing France in the New World and winning to her sway and her religion, these red children. His journal shows the genuineness of his amused affection for them, a factor which was a large part of the very real hold he had upon them. It was in May of 1609 that he started out from Quebec on this new venture. He took eleven Frenchmen with him besides the small contingent of Montagnais and between two and three hundred Hurons. They passed Three Rivers, crossed Lake St. Peter and went on up the River Richelieu (since variously named the St. John, the Rivere des Iroquois, the Chambly, the St. Louis, and the Sorel). The rapids of the Richelieu halted the expedition and Champlain had occasion to rebuke his Indian friends for having assured him that there was a clear water way to the head of Lake Champlain. At the rapids, three-fourths of the Indians seceded from the adventure, and Champlain, still eager to go forward, was unwilling to risk his French companions in so uncertain an enterprise. For himself he seems never to have held any fear, either of Indians or of natural disasters in the woods or on stormy waters. He always wanted to see what came next. So he sent back all but two of his white followers, and, after a portage around the rapids, proceeded. The force now numbered but sixty Indians, and the fleet that carried them consisted of twenty-four canoes. By day they paddled, but now, coming near the Iroquois country, they encamped at night with some barricade against attack though the Indians would set no watch. They advanced thus up Lake Champlain. They had not expected to stop there, but to go on down to the lower Iroquois region, when suddenly, in the words of Champlain's journal, SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN 10 CHAMPLAIN AND THE IROQUOIS 11 "As we were going along very quietly, and without making any noise, on the twenty-ninth of the month, we met the Iroquois at ten o'clock at night on the end of a cape that projects into the lake on the west side, and they were coming to war." What this cape, now famous as the promontory of Ticonderoga was called then, the Sieur de Champlain does not say. Its natural advantages as a place of battle had drawn the Iroquois to it, and it may be that they had already named it Cheondaraga or Ticonderoga which in their tongue signified "Between two lakes." As soon as the two bands came in sight of one another, the Iroquois drew up their canoes which were lighter and smaller than those of the Montagnais and Hurons, while Champlain's warriors paddled out a bow shot from the land and prepared to spend the night there. They fastened all but two of the canoes to poles which held them together in one mass and steadied them. The two canoes left out of this formation were paddled ashore, and the Iroquois were asked that old question, "Do you want to fight?" The Iroquois replied that they desired nothing else, says Champlain gravely, but that there was only a little light, and they must wait for day if they were to tell friend from foe. As soon as the sun rose they would fight. All that night, the Montagnais in their boats and the Iroquois on shore hurled insults back and forth. ''Men of little courage," the Iroquois called their foes from the north, feeble, "unfit to fight the warriors of the southern lakes and rivers." The three Frenchmen being the Montagnais' latest war invention, their surprise to spring on the enemy in battle next day, were kept concealed through the night, the exultant Indians only replying to Iroquois yells that they should soon see "such power of arms as never before." Next morning, the three Frenchmen put on their armor in the canoes and were paddled ashore, still unseen of the enemy. Then the Iroquois came out of their barricade, two hundred strong, an impressive company of tall, sturdy warriors with a 12 FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY dignity and assurance which pleased the veteran of European wars much. At their head were three chiefs wearing the dis- tinguishing feathers in their head dress. The Montagnais pointed out these leaders to Champlain and assured him that the three must be killed by his arquebus. He assured the Montagnais that he would do his best. Then the rest of the fleet came to land, and the Montagnais ran towards the Iroquois, stopping about two hundred paces from them. Both sides stood firm, and then the invaders began to call for their champion, Champlain. They drew apart in two columns between which Champlain advanced, and then, twenty paces in advance of them, he led the Montagnais until he was within thirty paces of the astonished Iroquois. Despite their small number, the Montag- nais were confident that Champlain and his arquebus would make up the difference of one hundred forty in numbers. Then there were the other two Frenchmen who had slipped unseen into the woods and were moving around to the flank of the foe. Champlain waited until he saw the Iroquois about to raise their bows to shoot. Then, "I rested my arquebus against my cheek and aimed directly at one of the three chiefs. With the same shot two of them fell to the ground, and one of their companions, who was wounded and afterwards died. I put four balls into my arquebus. When our men saw this shot so favorable for them, they began to make cries so loud that one could not have heard it thunder." The Iroquois were astounded, but they stood their ground and discharged their arrows until one of the Frenchmen hidden in the forest, fired and claimed another of their men. Then they fled to the woods with the Montagnais in pursuit. The Iroquois succeeded in carrying off most of their wounded, but some ten or twelve warriors were captured and brought in by the allies for torture and death. Champlain had no love for that side of the Indian character and when his Algonquins saw him turn away in disgust from the sight of their ingenious infliction of pain, they finally consented to let him end one wretch's suffering by a ball from his arquebus. PETER SCHUYLER First Mayor of Albany 13 MARQUIS DE VAUDREUIL 14 CHAMPLAIN AND THE IROQUOIS 15 Champlain made several more visits to New France and came down through the lake country on expeditions with the Huron, but never again was a stand made against him at Ticon- deroga. The Iroquois never forgave him nor the French whom he represented. Their reputation in war had been seriously damaged, and they valued their prestige. More than a century later, they cast in their lot with the English against the French who had humbled them. Champlain attacked the Seneca Iroquois later, near Lake Canandagua, and there he was wounded and carried back to Canada on the back of an Indian warrior. He did not much like the impromptu ambulance service and has briefly recorded his impression that it was "Hell." His last years went to the hard and somewhat uncongenial work of managing the barely held colony of Quebec, busying himself with the problems of famine, trouble with the English, Indian disputes and colony squabbles. At last, at the age of sixty-eight, he was stricken with paralysis, and on Christmas day of the year 1635, he died in the colony which had leaned so heavily upon him for help and guidance. Parkman's tribute to him may well close the account of the life of this, the greatest adventurer and truest knight errant of the many France sent into the American wilderness: "His dauntless courage was matched by an unwearied patience, a patience proved by life-long vexations. He is charged with credulity, from which few of his age were free, and which in all ages has been the foible of earnest and generous natures, too ardent to criticise, and too honorable to doubt the honor of others A soldier from his youth, in an age of umbridled license, his life had answered to his maxims; and when .a generation had passed after his visit to the Hurons, their elders remembered with astonishment the continence of the great French war-chief. "His books mark the man, all for his theme and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault, they bear on every page the palpable impress of truth." CHAPTER II FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 FORT VAUDREUIL, the predecessor and forerunner of the present fort on the heights of Ticonderoga, was begun in 1755, but the reason for erecting it goes back some twenty earlier. The English settlements in lower New York and the French hold on the northern region merged in a debatable country along Lake Champlain and Lake George, and as the wars between France and England, carried on in Europe, increased in intensity and ill will, some feeling of fric- tion naturally developed at the overlapping lines of both coun- tries' holdings in America. In the year 1731, the French seized a promontory opposite Crown Point, and then, crossing over, possessed themselves of the heights on the west shore also. By virtue of the Peace of Utrecht, the English felt that this section belonged to the domains of the Iroquois and that it was, there- fore, under the protectorate of England. Meanwhile, the French cleared much of the land lying between Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and there was some trade inter- course between the French and English colonies. Now when the French had erected a formidable fortress on the point of land which they had seized, the English colonists began to fear French aggression, and they invoked the aid of their home government. It was not until 1755 that the British made a decided demand that the French destroy their stronghold, and then, instead of yielding to that demand, the French proceeded twenty miles farther south and began the erection of Fort Vaudreuil on the promontory of Ticonderoga. This post, Watson says in his "Pioneer History of the Champlain Valley," "destined to a terrible celebrity, became the most extensive and magnificent fortress in America." 16 THE MAROUIS DE MONTCALM 17 Dec DE LEVIS 18 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 19 This first of the forts on Ticonderoga was not the well-built structure which was ready to face attack three years later. The fort, as Lotbiniere designed it, was square, with four bastions of earth and timber, but his plans seem to have grown with the unavoidable realization which the next few years brought forth, that Ticonderoga was the key to invasion of New York by the French or of Canada by the English, and we find several mentions of the strengthening of the works between 1755 and 1758. Major Robert Rogers, leader of the famous rangers, records in his journal that on a reconnoitering expedition from the English camp on Lake George, he proceeded to a point of land on the west side of the lake and marched to the point of Ticonderoga where he and his companions observed a body of men, which they judged to be about 2000 in number, "who had thrown up an intrenchment, and prepared large quantities of hewn timber in the adjacent woods. We remained here the second night," he adds, "and next morning (October 9, 1755) saw them lay the foundation of a fort on that point which commands the pass from Lake George to Lake Champlain." From this time until the fort fell into English hands, it seems to have been the duty of Roberts with his rangers to patrol this region and keep the British posted as to the strength of the garrison at Carillon. On September 9, 1756, he says, "I was within a mile of Ticonderoga fort where I endeavored to reconnoitre the enemy's works and strength. They were engaged in raising the walls of the fort and erected a large blockhouse near the southeast corner of the fort with ports in it for cannon. East from the blockhouse was a battery which I imagined commanded the lake." He also reports the French to be building a sawmill at the lower end of the falls. (September, 1756.) Rogers' most daring exploit, or most impudent one, was consummated on Christmas eve of 1757, when he and his men came close enough to kill about seventeen head of cattle and set fire to the wood piles of the garrison in Carillon. To the horns of one of the beeves, he attached a note to the fort commander: 20 FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY "I am obliged to you, sir, for the repose you have allowed me to take. I thank you for the fresh meat you have sent me. I will take care of my prisoners. I request you to present my compliments to the Marquis de Montcalm. (Signed) Rogers, Commander of the Independent Companies." The work which Rogers reported was chiefly that done by Dieskau and his men. When the French commander advanced to meet Sir William Johnson on Lake George in 1755, he fortified the heights at Ticonderoga by way of protecting his rear. Dieskau himself was wounded and taken prisoner in that fight, but his men, falling back as he had planned they should if the fortune of war demanded it, continued the building of the Carillon fort. They erected a storehouse at the landing, and a sawmill on the north side of the lower falls, at the time that the fort on the hill was being built. The site of the sawmill is now marked by a monument commemorating not only the building of the mill, but that it was the headquarters of General James Abercrombie while his men were carrying out his stupidly disastrous orders in the woods above him. During the season of 1756, more than 2000 French workmen were constantly engaged upon the fort. The work continued slowly during the next year and a half. It did not always go on under peaceful conditions. A letter from Monsieur de Montreuil to the Minister of War at Montreal, on the twentieth of April, 1758, reports that on March 13, of that year, Monsieur de la Durentaye, an officer of the colony at the head of two hundred savages and some Canadians entirely destroyed a detachment of 160 English whom they met three leagues from the fort. "We lost," his report closes, "in this occasion, 20 savages killed and wounded." In a letter of the same year, July 20, Montcalm wrote to the Minister of War that he had spent fifteen days at Carillon, and that he had found the work of the fort, begun the year before, but little advanced. He says: "The fort is of pieces of wood laid with traverses and with the intervals between filled with earth." COUNT DE BOUGAINVILLE 21 MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS 22 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 23 Some of the guns which defended the fort were brought to Carillon, as the French called Ticonderoga, from Fort William Henry in the spring of 1757 when Montcalm captured it from General Munro. Montcalm took away a siege-train of twelve heavy guns, several mortars, and a large supply of ammunition and stores. The French had decidedly the upper hand in the war until the Earl of Newcastle retired as premier of England and William Pitt came in. Then General Webb who had been afraid to reinforce Munro at Fort William Henry, and the Earl of Loudon who had conducted a war of notes and inactivity, were swept out, and in their places came Sir Jeffry Amherst and General James Wolfe. They were good complements of one another, Amherst slow and over-cautious, Wolfe daring and unexpected in his brilliant moves. It was of Wolfe, when a nervous English critic said that he was mad, that George II made his famous retort: "Veil den, if Volfe is mat, I vish he vould pite some of my udder chenerals!" The one weak spot left was General James Abercrombie, and to cover that spot, George Augustus, Lord Howe, was sent out to campaign with him. Pitt's plans were to secure the three points of France's strength, Quebec, Louisburg, and Ticonderoga; and for the taking of Ticonderoga, Abercrombie was chosen, still with Lord Howe attached to his forces, and with the redoubtable Rogers and his rangers among the band. Sir William Johnson also led up some of his Iroquois and held them in readiness on Mount Independence across the lake, but they were not used in the action. Of Abercrombie's army, Sloan gives a clear picture: "In the early summer, while the English bombs were bursting over doomed Louisburg, there assembled on the shores of Lake George what is said to have been the largest number of white soldiers hitherto gathered together on the continent, an army of fifteen thousand men, six thousand three hundred and sixty seven British regulars, and nine thousand and twenty-four American provincials chiefly from New England, New York and northern New Jersey. Its nominal leader was Abercrombie 24 FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY the former lieutenant of Lord Loudon. He was a survivor from the regime now happily passed away, and was dubbed by the rustic wit of the colonies, 'Nabbiecrombie.' The real leader was intended to be Lord Howe, regarded by penetrating men like Wolfe and Pitt as the mirror of military virtue Among the colonial officers were Captain Stark of New Hamp- shire, and Major Israel Putnam of Connecticut. Every prepara- tion which human foresight could suggest had been made. Lord Howe and his regulars had thoroughly drilled themselves in the tactics of forest fighting, there were nine hundred bateaux and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats for the troops, with stout barges for the artillery. The expedition moved down the lake on July fifth. The equipments were in good order, officers and men in high spirits. Early next morning they landed near the foot of the west shore, at a point still known as Howe's Cove." From this point, the troops had to march through the woods to reach their objective, a wild, unbroken way. A party of French skirmishers three hundred in number under Langy, had been sent out to annoy them. The English, scrambling over fallen trees and skirting ravines, soon lost their way, and as the French skirmishers were equally at a loss for directions in the woods, the opposing parties came suddenly upon one another. Lord Howe and Major Israel Putnam had hurried to the fore- front of the light troops when the firing began. What happened is best told in the words of Captain Moneypenny, who wrote to Mr. Calcraft on July 11, 1758: "Sir: It is with the Utmost Concern, I write you of the Death of Lord Howe. Cn the 6th the whole army landed without opposition, at the carrying place, about seven miles from Ticon- deroga. About two o'clock, they marched in four columns, to Invest the Brest W T ork, where the enemy was Encamp'd, near the Fort. The Rangers were before the Army and the Light Infantry and marksmen at the Heads of the Columns. W'e expected, and met with some opposition near a small River, which we had to cross. When the Firing began on part of the 25 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON, BARONET 26 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 27 Left Column, Lord Howe, thinking it would be of the greatest Consequence to beat off the Enemy with the Light Troops, so as not to stop the March of the Main Body, went up with them, and had just gained the top of the Hill, where the firing was, when he was Killed. Never Ball had a more Deadly Direction. It entered his breast on the left side, and (as the Surgeons say) pierced his Lungs, and heart, and shattered his Back Bone. I was about six yards from him, he fell on his Back and never moved, only his Hands quivered an Instant The Confidence the Army, both regular and provincial, had in his Abilities as a general officer, the Readiness with which, every order of his, or even entimation of what would be agree- able to Him, was comply 'd with, is allmost Incredible. When His Body was brought into Camp, scarce an Eye was free from Tears." His death was indeed an irreparable loss to the British. He had been called "the brains of the army." There were men left who could have planned the attack, but it was Abercrombie who was in command, and he was not the man either to plan or to offset the depression which had fallen upon his men with the death of Lord Howe. Montcalm had less than one-fourth the number of men that Abefcrombie's army contained, but Mont- calm himself had the entire confidence of his troops. He con- sulted his generals as to whether it was best to make a stand against so great a force of English, then, taking the advice of so old a campaigner as Monsieur Pouchot who commanded the regiment of Beam, he decided to remain and fight. The British could approach in a body only through the woods on the northwest, and in these woods, Montcalm had his men hurriedly throw up irregular lines of earthworks. Abercrombie, sitting disconsolate in the sawmill below, gave him time for completing the defences and cutting down trees throughout the wood to make the passage more difficult. Trees were piled before ditches so that only the occasional top of a silver-edged black tricorner appeared. Then fallen trees were dragged into position with their branches facing the enemy, so that an infantry attack was, by foregone conclusion destined to failure. 28 FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY On the morning of the eighth of July, Abercrombie gave his orders for just such an attack. The infantry, unaided by any artillery whatsoever, were to go forward against the French outworks in the woods, take them at the point of the bayonet, and advance upon the fort. No artillery played against the breastwork; Abercrombie believed it unnecessary. No cannon fired from Mount Independence or from Defiance, there was no attempt made to get between the French and their base of supplies. The British were sent in good marching order, left, center and right, straight upon destruction. One can not charge a tree top with a bayonet, and to get through a fallen forest while muskets and swivel guns are firing directly upon one is, patently, difficult. Abercrombie did send a flotilla down the outlet to attempt to turn the French left, but the cannon of the fort easily drove it off. To Abercrombie down at the sawmill, word was brought that the charge had failed, and his reply was that the troops should charge again. There were six such advances into the tree defences made that afternoon, and then at last, Abercrombie was convinced that the affair had failed, and having used his one idea, he fell into a panic, and hurried the shattered remnant of his men away in disorder. Montcalm, who realized how open to other attack his position was, made his defences even stronger in the ensuing days, but the English returned no more in that year. Four days after the charge, the French lines assumed the form they now have, running in points and zigzag lines along distance through the woods. Probably, much of the original plan was kept, and only such places as had proved weak, were corrected to coordinate with the rest of the works. Monsieur Pouchot's comment on this in his "Memoir upon the War in North America" is: "On the eleventh we began to correct our intrenchments, having had good occasion to know their faults." Monsieur Pouchot has left his tribute to the attacking force, as well as to the coolness and courage of the French. "The enemy," he says, "behaved in this attack with the great- est bravery, standing without flinching before a terrible fire of \ GEORGE AUGUSTUS, LORD HOWE 29 MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN SULLIVAN 30 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 31 musketry. They had many killed within ten or twelve paces from our intrenchments." The French troops behind the ramparts were the battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc posted on the left under Bourlamarque, the first battalion of Barry and that of Royal Roussilon in the center under Montcalm, the battalions of La Reine, Beam, (Pouchot's command) and Guienne on the right under de Levis. A detachment of volunteers was stationed on the low ground near the breastworks and the outlet of Lake George, and on the side towards Lake Champlain there were four hundred fifty Canadians and regulars, making about 3600 in all. The French seem to have had no intention of using Indians, and the Iroquois reserve of the English were not brought into action, so that Montcalm, in making his report of the affair to the Minis- ter at Quebec, says that this was probably the first engagement in America in which Indians were not used. The attacking troops were enumerated by an English officer writing from Albany after the fight. He was convalescing from a wound received during the attack, and he described the army as it had appeared on the route down Lake George to Howe's Cove : "Rogers with the Rangers, and Gage with the light infantry led the way in whaleboats, followed by Bradstreet with his corps of boatmen, armed and drilled as soldiers. Then came the main body. The central column of regulars was commanded by Lord Howe, his own regiment, the fifty-fifth, in the van, followed by the Royal Americans, the twenty-seventh, forty-fourth, forty-sixth and eightieth infantry and the Highlanders of the forty-second with their major, Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, silent and gloomy amid the general cheer, for his soul was dark with foreshadowings of death. Then came the floating castles or batteries to cover the landing of troops, and on the right and left were the blue-uniformed provincials, the regiments from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. After the troops came the bateaux loaded with baggage and stores, then the flatboats containing the artillery, and the last in line was the rear guard of provincials and regulars. 32 FORT TICONDEROGA IN HISTORY Captain (late Major) Moneypenny who chronicled the prep- arations in his orderly book at Albany and late at Lake George Camp, has this entry for July 7, the day before the attack: "If time permits the Army will be drawn up this Evening or to- morrow to fire a rejoicing Fire for the good News the General has had from Louisberg As there are a number of Indians expected this day with Sir Wm. Johnson all the troops are desired to treat them with the utmost Civility." Then for two days, his book has no entries, and on July 10th he notes: "The general thanks the officers and men for their gallant behavior at the French Lines." It is not until the twenty-eighth of August that he records the belated order to the troops to fire their "rejoicing fire" for the "success of His Majesty's Arms in taking of Louisberg." 'No account of that disaster of 1758 is complete without a tribute to the Grenadiers and Scotch Highlanders who distin- guished themselves with a reckless bravery that lifted the wretched failure into something like martyrdom well met. The Black Watch, known in 1758 as the Highland Regiment and as the 42nd Regiment of Foot, left on the field one captain-lieuten- ant, six subalterns and one hundred eighty men killed. James Murray of this regiment, writing home after the fight from Albany where he was recovering from a wound in the thigh, says that the major, one lieutenant and six subalterns had died of wounds since the affair, while the colonel, four captains, twelve subalterns, and two hundred eighty men were wounded but still living. This regiment was not up to its full strength in the attack. Normally, it numbered 1300 men, but two companies had been left to garrison Fort Edward, and a third company had met with such foul weather on its trip to America that it has reached New York only a few weeks before, after spending months at sea. When it did finally arrive, Abercrombie assigned it to Albany. The Highland regiment, with the 55th, was to have formed the reserve, but the reserve was soon in the thick of the fighting PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF LAKE a,. FtotO^ Jiatoy.^SBaUtrtna peiat of" Cannon,. '"'XxWtff b . Sloop of J4 Can-ULa c- . Diamond i-LmJ.ij Mii* up dc LjAr, P&rcfSket-Ji- S/uUf Plan of Ticonderoga ITZe ftaat. rrAare, tfu SaXDet are Work,. ttuuUgfFMl Intt [6, tyntt 'A* Roast. ~S .Aon*// fort team*- . TJu afubna ^laee fir tfu Tra*tt , R . Tnf.Pfaot rrfarv IKffattOte lay S Jic Floor MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN STARK 34 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO 1758 35 about the tree ramparts. A few of the Black Watch under Captain John Campbell, forces their way over the breastworks where they were killed by the French bayonets. None of the regiments engaged, came off unscathed, but the greatest loss was to the Highlanders. The most eloquent comment on their depleted ranks occurs in the account given by Stewart of Garth: "The old Highland Regiment having suffered so severely . . . . they were not employed again that year." CHAPTER III FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS 1759 THE year 1758 closed then with only one- third of Pitt's plan carried out. Wolfe had taken Louisburg, but Quebec and Ticonderoga were still French. In the West, Fort Duquesne had fallen to the English, and Oswego was once more in British hands. Now, with Abercrombie packed back to Eng- land where he was "kicked upstairs" into parliament, Sir Jeffry Amherst was made commander in chief of the king's forces in America with instructions to march the main army up the Hudson and then as far as Lake Champlain, after which, he was to pass Ticonderoga and unite with Wolfe at Quebec. The position of the French at Carillon no longer had even the air of being solid. The French government was not granting to the war the support it needed, and disaffection was rife. Graft in the matter of supplies had raised the prices of necessi- ties three hundred percent above normal, and men, asked to exist on one-half their usual rations in the name of the king and the frivolous governor whose indifference was causing their suffering, failed sometimes, of enthusiasm. The French leaders of the troops in the field and at the forts, however were of the best, and the defenses of Carillon had been strengthened after Abercrombie's attack. General Bourlamaque, who had been wounded in the fight in the French lines in 1758, had been left by Montcalm in charge of the fort in 1759. The change in the English conduct of the war was making itself felt, that summer. Wolfe had reached Quebec with a small force, and Amherst's army was gathering. Early in July, he sent word to Wolfe that he was about to begin his march north. On July 21st, 5743 British regulars and about the same number 36 MAJOR-GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 37 ^.s^*,, ^*^,f*!SjisS! '** " ^S5>!f*^S^K**.?^^^'l^/y - c. - ^ -,. > - vj^y; y ] f/if TO TTJV^ ;/^ FORT ^",; : ' :*5 Pl.V sslSfwS 4^ ,