Ticonderoga in 1758

The peninsula of Ticonderoga consists of a rocky plateau, with low grounds on each side, bordering Lake Champlain on the one hand and the outlet of Lake George on the other.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in Montcalm and Wolfe, Volume 7 of the French in Canada series. Continuing Chapter 20.

Lord Howe, with Major Israel Putnam and two hundred rangers, was at the head of the principal column, which was a little in advance of the three others. Suddenly the challenge, Qui vive! rang sharply from the thickets in front. Français! was the reply. Langy’s men were not deceived; they fired out of the bushes. The shots were returned; a hot skirmish followed; and Lord Howe dropped dead, shot through the breast. All was confusion. The dull, vicious reports of musketry in thick woods, at first few and scattering, then in fierce and rapid volleys, reached the troops behind. They could hear but see nothing. Already harassed and perplexed, they became perturbed. For all they knew, Montcalm’s whole army was upon them. Nothing prevented a panic but the steadiness of the rangers, who maintained the fight alone till the rest came back to their senses. Rogers, with his reconnoitering party and the regiments of Fitch and Lyman, were at no great distance in front. They all turned on hearing the musketry and thus the French were caught between two fires. They fought with desperation. About fifty of them at length escaped; a hundred and forty-eight were captured and the rest killed or drowned in trying to cross the rapids. The loss of the English was small in numbers but immeasurable in the death of Howe. “The fall of this noble and brave officer,” says Rogers, “seemed to produce an almost general languor and consternation through the whole army.” “In Lord Howe,” writes another contemporary, Major Thomas Mante, “the soul of General Abercromby’s army seemed to expire. From the unhappy moment the General was deprived of his advice, neither order nor discipline was observed and a strange kind of infatuation usurped the place of resolution.” The death of one man was the ruin of fifteen thousand.

The evil news was dispatched to Albany and in two or three days the messenger who bore it passed the house of Mrs. Schuyler on the meadows above the town. “In the afternoon,” says her biographer, “a man was seen coming from the north galloping violently without his hat. Pedrom, as he was familiarly called, Colonel Schuyler’s only surviving brother, was with her and ran instantly to inquire, well knowing that he rode express. The man galloped on, crying out that Lord Howe was killed. The mind of our good aunt had been so engrossed by her anxiety and fears for the event impending and so impressed with the merit and magnanimity of her favorite hero, that her wonted firmness sank under the stroke and she broke out into bitter lamentations. This had such an effect on her friends and domestics that shrieks and sobs of anguish echoed through every part of the house.”

The effect of the loss was seen at once. The army was needlessly kept under arms all night in the forest and in the morning was ordered back to the landing whence it came.[1] Towards noon, however, Bradstreet was sent with a detachment of regulars and provincials to take possession of the sawmill at the Falls, which Montcalm had abandoned the evening before. Bradstreet rebuilt the bridges destroyed by the retiring enemy and sent word to his commander that the way was open; on which Abercromby again put his army in motion, reached the Falls late in the afternoon and occupied the deserted encampment of the French.

[1: Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July, 1758.]

Montcalm with his main force had held this position at the Falls through most of the preceding day, doubtful, it seems, to the last whether he should not make his final stand there. Bourlamaque was for doing so; but two old officers, Bernès and Montguy, pointed out the danger that the English would occupy the neighboring heights;[2] whereupon Montcalm at length resolved to fall back. The camp was broken up at five o’clock. Some of the troops embarked in bateaux, while others marched a mile and a half along the forest road, passed the place where the battalion of Berry was still at work on the breastwork begun in the morning and made their bivouac a little farther on, upon the cleared ground that surrounded the fort.

[2: Pouchot, I. 145.]

The peninsula of Ticonderoga consists of a rocky plateau, with low grounds on each side, bordering Lake Champlain on the one hand and the outlet of Lake George on the other. The fort stood near the end of the peninsula, which points towards the southeast. Thence, as one goes westward, the ground declines a little and then slowly rises, till, about half a mile from the fort, it reaches its greatest elevation and begins still more gradually to decline again. Thus a ridge is formed across the plateau between the steep declivities that sink to the low grounds on right and left. Some weeks before, a French officer named Hugues had suggested the defense of this ridge by means of an abattis.[3] Montcalm approved his plan; and now, at the eleventh hour, he resolved to make his stand here. The two engineers, Pontleroy and Desandrouin, had already traced the outline of the works and the soldiers of the battalion of Berry had made some progress in constructing them. At dawn of the seventh, while Abercromby, fortunately for his enemy, was drawing his troops back to the landing-place, the whole French army fell to their task.

[3: N.Y. Col. Docs., X. 708.]

The regimental colors were planted along the line and the officers, stripped to the shirt, took axe in hand and labored with their men. The trees that covered the ground were hewn down by thousands, the tops lopped off and the trunks piled one upon another to form a massive breastwork. The line followed the top of the ridge, along which it zig-zagged in such a manner that the whole front could be swept by flank-fires of musketry and grape. Abercromby describes the wall of logs as between eight and nine feet high;[4] in which case there must have been a rude banquette, or platform to fire from, on the inner side. It was certainly so high that nothing could be seen over it but the crowns of the soldiers’ hats. The upper tier was formed of single logs, in which notches were cut to serve as loopholes; and in some places sods and bags of sand were piled along the top, with narrow spaces to fire through.[5] From the central part of the line the ground sloped away like a natural glacis; while at the sides and especially on the left, it was undulating and broken. Over this whole space, to the distance of a musket-shot from the works, the forest was cut down and the trees left lying where they fell among the stumps, with tops turned outwards, forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.[6] But the most formidable obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the quills of a porcupine. As these works were all of wood, no vestige of them remains. The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are not on the same plan.[7]

[4: Abercromby to Harrington, 12 July, 1758. “At least eight feet high.” Rogers, Journals, 116.]

[5: A Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, writing on the 14th, says that there were two and in some parts three, rows of loopholes. See the letter in Pennsylvania Archives, III. 472.]

[6: Colonel Oliver Partridge to his Wife, 12 July, 1758.]

[7: A new line of works was begun four days after the battle, to replace the log breastwork. Malartic, Journal. Travaux faits à Carillon, 1758.]

Here, then, was a position which, if attacked in front with musketry alone, might be called impregnable. But would Abercromby so attack it? He had several alternatives. He might attempt the flank and rear of his enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a movement which the precautions of Montcalm had made difficult but not impossible. Or, instead of leaving his artillery idle on the strand of Lake George, he might bring it to the front and batter the breastwork, which, though impervious to musketry, was worthless against heavy cannon. Or he might do what Burgoyne did with success a score of years later and plant a battery on the heights of Rattlesnake Hill, now called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position of the French and whence the inside of their breastwork could be scoured with round-shot from end to end. Or, while threatening the French front with a part of his army, he could march the rest a short distance through the woods on his left to the road which led from Ticonderoga to Crown Point and which would soon have brought him to the place called Five-Mile Point, where Lake Champlain narrows to the width of an easy rifle-shot and where a battery of field-pieces would have cut off all Montcalm’s supplies and closed his only way of retreat. As the French were provisioned for but eight days, their position would thus have been desperate. They plainly saw the danger; and Doreil declares that had the movement been made, their whole army must have surrendered.[8] Montcalm had done what he could; but the danger of his position was inevitable and extreme. His hope lay in Abercromby; and it was a hope well founded. The action of the English general answered the utmost wishes of his enemy.

[8: Doreil au Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758. The Chevalier Johnstone thought that Montcalm was saved by Abercromby’s ignorance of the ground. A Dialogue in Hades (Quebec Historical Society).]

Abercromby had been told by his prisoners that Montcalm had six thousand men and that three thousand more were expected every hour. Therefore he was in haste to attack before these succors could arrive. As was the general, so was the army. “I believe,” writes an officer, “we were one and all infatuated by a notion of carrying every obstacle by a mere coup de mousqueterie.”[9] Leadership perished with Lord Howe and nothing was left but blind, headlong valor.

[9: See the letter in Knox, I. 148.]

Clerk, chief engineer, was sent to reconnoiter the French works from Mount Defiance; and came back with the report that, to judge from what he could see, they might be carried by assault. Then, without waiting to bring up his cannon, Abercromby prepared to storm the lines.

The French finished their breastwork and abattis on the evening of the seventh, encamped behind them, slung their kettles and rested after their heavy toil. Lévis had not yet appeared; but at twilight one of his officers, Captain Pouchot, arrived with three hundred regulars and announced that his commander would come before morning with a hundred more. The reinforcement, though small, was welcome and Lévis was a host in himself. Pouchot was told that the army was half a mile off. Thither he repaired, made his report to Montcalm and looked with amazement at the prodigious amount of work accomplished in one day.[10] Lévis himself arrived in the course of the night and approved the arrangement of the troops. They lay behind their lines till daybreak; then the drums beat and they formed in order of battle.[11] The battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc were posted on the left, under Bourlamaque, the first battalion of Berry with that of Royal Roussillon in the center, under Montcalm and those of La Reine, Béarn and Guienne on the right, under Lévis. A detachment of volunteers occupied the low grounds between the breastwork and the outlet of Lake George; while, at the foot of the declivity on the side towards Lake Champlain, were stationed four hundred and fifty colony regulars and Canadians, behind an abattis which they had made for themselves; and as they were covered by the cannon of the fort, there was some hope that they would check any flank movement which the English might attempt on that side. Their posts being thus assigned, the men fell to work again to strengthen their defenses. Including those who came with Lévis, the total force of effective soldiers was now thirty-six hundred.[12]

[10: Pouchot, I. 137.]

[11: Livre d’Ordres, Disposition de Défense des Retranchements, 8 Juillet, 1758.]

[12: Montcalm, Relation de la Victoire remportée à Carillon, 8 Juillet, 1758. Vaudreuil puts the number at 4,760, besides officers, which includes the garrison and laborers at the fort. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758.]

From Montcalm and Wolfe, Chapter 20 by Francis Parkman

To be continued.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum at London. The papers copied for the present work in France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the “Paris Documents” procured for the State of New York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead. The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this side of the Atlantic.

I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now preserved in a private collection. I have examined them and obtained copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on the persons and events of the time.

Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets, contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American part of the Seven Years’ War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me. The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.

The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and in the open air as at the library table.

BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.

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