Part 5

Meanwhile the French at Crown Point were preparing a surprise for Johnson. Large forces under the German Baron Dieskau had come up, and Dieskau had assumed command of the united troops. He had no thought of waiting to be attacked. He told his men to be in readiness to move at a moment’s notice. Officers were to take nothing with them but one spare shirt, one spare pair of shoes, a blanket, a bearskin and provisions for twelve days. The Indians were to make up their minds not to take scalps until the enemy had been entirely defeated, because the operation of taking a scalp was too lengthy a proceeding, and kept them from killing other men. Then Dieskau moved on to a promontory which commanded both Lake Champlain and Lake George. It was a high wooden mount with a magnificent view of the waters; in short, our old friend Ticonderoga.

The German baron for a time made camp here, the first formal military occupation of this point, but at length, being misinformed by an American prisoner, who had been threatened with torture, as to the force Johnson had, he prepared to move in haste and with deadly intent against the American colonials. News of Braddock’s defeat had just then become general information, and throughout the ranks of the ignorant white men of the French party and of all their savage allies ran an unwarranted contempt for English bravery based on accounts of that lamentable massacre. Dieskau left a part of his force at Ticonderoga, and embarking with the rest in canoes and bateaux made his way through the narrow southern part of Lake Champlain to where the town of Whitehall now stands, a point at which they pitched camp.

The close of the next day found them well on toward Johnson and on the day after that the battle of Lake George took place. It is unnecessary to go into detail about this. The first part of the day went against the Americans, who had foolishly sent out against Dieskau, when they received word of his approach, an insufficient number of white and red forces; but the end of the day found the Americans victorious. Dieskau was badly wounded and was a prisoner.

The story goes that a delegation of chiefs waited upon Johnson while Dieskau was in his cabin. The unwilling guest made some comment about them to his host after their departure. “Yes, they wish to be allowed to burn you,” was the response. Johnson took extraordinary pains that the French leader should not fall into the hands of his savages, and Dieskau died a peaceful death as a result of his wounds several years later, midst the civilization of Bath, England, whence he had gone in hopes of being benefited by the waters.

Johnson commenced now to build Fort William Henry at one end of Lake George, and the French, quickly recovering from their set-back, began building at the other end, on the site of Dieskau’s camp, the famous Fort Ticonderoga. The building of the French fort consumed the greater part of 1756 and 1757, and was consummated under the reign, in Canada, of Vaudreuil.

The original plan of Fort Ticonderoga was of a bastion fort, but afterwards star-shaped outer walls, following plans of the great Vauban, were added. The French built solidly in their various military works, and Fort Ticonderoga was an enduring and strong construction.

We have seen Fort William Henry and Fort Ticonderoga started as rivals. The survivor of these two was Ticonderoga, and the destruction of Fort William Henry was the occasion of one of the saddest and most horrible massacres in American history. In 1757 the Marquis de Montcalm, chief of the French king’s forces in Canada, was at Ticonderoga and with him was the Chevalier de Levis with about eight thousand regulars, Canadians and Indians. The troopers and the irregular forces were camped around the walls of Ticonderoga near the lake and in the rear of the fort where the eminence of land on which the fort stands continues in a gentle plateau before commencing its descent. A colorful, picturesque camp it was, with its red Indians, its half-breed whites, and its careless soldiery. The officers and gentlemen of consequence were lodged in the fort where they ate in the mess hall and lounged and smoked and drank at leisure.

With his eight thousand men Montcalm set forth on the first of August, 1757, across the little neck of land which divides Lake Champlain from Lake George, leaving a small detachment to hold the fort, and made his way along Lake George to near Fort William Henry. His Britannic Majesty’s stronghold was solidly built and was in command of a capable officer, Lieutenant Colonel Munro, a brave Scotchman, but its garrison was insufficient, and reinforcements were never sent. Montcalm attacked.

So well did the little band of beleaguered men contest their position, that when inevitably they surrendered very favorable terms were offered. It was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors of war and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachment of French troops; that they should not serve for eighteen months, and that all French prisoners captured in America since the war began should be given up within three months. The stores, munitions, and artillery were to be the prize of the victors, except that the garrison, in recognition of its bravery, was to retain one field-piece. The Indian chiefs were consulted in the making of these terms and agreed to them by shaking of the hands.

When the capitulation took place, a scene very different from that which had been anticipated was to be viewed. The Indians, excited by the presence of so many captives, as they considered the English prisoners of war, were not to be restrained and, though measures were taken to hold them in rein, fell upon the helpless men and women and butchered them mercilessly.

The morning after the massacre soldiers were set to work destroying all that remained of Fort William Henry.

The year that followed the massacre--1758--brought the most formidable looking and least effective of all of the attacks against Ticonderoga. The English, thoroughly incensed at the loss of Fort William Henry, had set themselves with determination to destroy Ticonderoga and to this end had raised a great force of regular soldiery, provincial militia and those invaluable irregular border troops of which Roger’s rangers are a good example, and had placed them under the command of General Abercrombie. The whole body lay encamped in June, 1758, at the head of Lake George, within easy striking distance of the terrible French stronghold. It numbered nearly fifteen thousand men, all told. Montcalm’s forces were not one-fourth so numerous and the great French leader was sadly sure of disaster to himself and his men.

That disaster did not, indeed, fall upon the French as the outcome of this undertaking on the part of the British is to be ascribed primarily to the unfortunate choice of a leader which they had had made for them and to Providence, which early in the campaign removed from their midst the only military talent which they seem to have possessed. Abercrombie was a political heritage of corrupt powers in England, where the government had undergone a great reconstruction since the horrors of Fort William Henry, and had been kept in authority solely on account of pressure which could be brought to bear at home. Lord Pitt had appointed as second in command of the expedition one of the few military geniuses of his age,--as all of his contemporaries admitted,--the young Lord Howe, elder brother of the more famous Sir William Howe, who later commanded His Majesty’s forces in America against the rebellious colonies. “The noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time and the best soldier in the British army,” said Wolfe, of him. In a minor skirmish at the very first of the reconnoitring around Ticonderoga he was killed by an Indian’s bullet, and the English troops were left to flounder on from one blunder to another.

The last part of the march against Ticonderoga was commenced on the morning of July 4 and by July 6 the soldiers were at the head of Lake George and in touch with the enemy in Ticonderoga just over a ridge of woods.

The ridge of land on which Ticonderoga is situated continues northwest without the sharp decline that marks its topography in every other direction. Along this spine, then, the English attack might be expected, so in this quarter Montcalm had had barriers built of fallen trees, laid together so as to form a zig-zag parapet nine feet in height and with a platform behind, from which the French soldiers might shoot without exposing themselves. Along the entire front of this barricade the ground was strewn with sharp-pointed boughs. Obviously it was not a position that infantry could take without the aid of artillery.

Yet, under Abercrombie’s command, the English advanced against this work without waiting for the cannon which they had with them to be brought up. Between noon and nightfall of July 7 they made six gallant assaults without result. A perfect hades of shot and flame those logs became. The scene has been described by one of Roger’s rangers who took part in the action, and his description, found in an old letter, was published a decade ago in Harper’s Magazine, by one of his descendants. “The maze of fallen trees with their withered leaves hanging broke their ranks and the French Retrenchment blazed fire and death” he wrote. “They advanced bravely up but all to no good purpose and hundreds there met their death. My dear Joseph I have the will but not the way to tell you all that I saw that awful afternoon. I have since been in many battles and skirmishes but I have never witnessed such slaughter and such wild fighting as the British storm of Ticonderoga. We became mixed up--Highlanders, Grenadiers, Light Troops, Rangers and all, and we beat against that mass of logs and maze of fallen timber and we beat in vain. I was once carried right up to the breastwork, but we were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches, while the French fire swept us front and flank. The ground was covered deep with dying men and, as I think it over now, I can remember nothing but the fruit bourne by the tree of war, for I looked upon so many wondrous things that July day that I could not set them downe at all. We drew off after seeing that no human valour could take that work. We Rangers then skirmished with the French colony troops and the Canada Indians until dark while our people rescued the wounded, and then we fell back. The Army was utterly demoralized and made a headlong retreat during which many wounded men were left to die in the woods.”

On the day following his victory Montcalm had a great cross planted in the battle-field bearing words, composed by himself, which have been translated by Parkman as follows:

Soldier and chief and rampart’s strength are nought; Behold the Conquering Cross! ’Tis God the triumph wrought.

The old fort was to fall into English hands the next year, however, when Amherst, commander-in-chief of the English forces in America, advanced against it with a force of British and Americans. Montcalm had hurried to the defence of Quebec with the greater part of his force and Ticonderoga was in the command of Boulemarque, a capable officer, but one no more able than any other man to accomplish the impossible. He could not hold the position with the inconsiderable force he had against that opposed to him. A stroke of Providence was not to be anticipated a second time. So, while the British encamped under the walls of the fort prepared to attack it the next day, Boulemarque set a fuse to the powder magazine and marched his men out. There was a great explosion and a rending of walls, and Ticonderoga’s besiegers knew that the fort was their prize.

Through the rest of the French and Indian War, which was from this time forward a tale of uninterrupted success for the British arms, Ticonderoga played no part except that of a garrisoned English possession. Its walls were repaired where Boulemarque’s match had shattered them.

The prestige of the fort had now become such that in the fermenting first days of the outbreak in the colonies against the Mother Country it was conceived that the seizure of the place would have an immense moral effect in the colonies. A sturdy Vermont man, Ethan Allen, with his Green Mountain boys, was given the task of seizing it. In early spring, 1775, Allen approached the old Indian stronghold now held by merely a handful of British, who had no idea that the Americans were in action against them. One cannot depreciate the tenacity of purpose and hardiness which carried Ethan Allen and his men through the inhospitable wilderness to success in their enterprise, but the military valor of the action was not great. With his men Allen crept up to the unsuspecting stronghold, seized the sentry, and, while his men scattered through the fort making prisoners of its inmates, thundered at the door of the commanding officer: “Open in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” While knowing little of the Continental Congress, the officer submitted to the inevitable.

The news of Allen’s exploit was spread through the colonies and was a determining influence with many undecided Americans. His resounding phrase has been repeated by school-boys many times since and is perhaps more familiarly associated with the name of Ticonderoga than any of the great exploits which have marked its past.

For a time the Americans held on to the fort. In 1776 a large force was concentrated here, since it guarded that very vital means of access to the heart of the colonies which the British persistently tried to make use of. It was from this point that in 1776 Benedict Arnold set forth with a small fleet of vessels to attack Sir Guy Carleton at Valcour Island. Though the American fleet was almost entirely destroyed, it, nevertheless, set back the plans of the British one year and delayed their projected invasion from the north that long.

In 1777 Burgoyne invested the fort and, by dragging some guns to the top of Mount Defiance, an eminence which commands Ticonderoga, caused General Arthur St. Clair of the American forces to evacuate the place. Burgoyne occupied the fort for a passing visit but was soon on his way into the colonies by the ancient trail which war parties for generations had trod, fortunately, for the colonies, to meet defeat and loss of his army at the battle of Saratoga.

The fort remained in the hands of the British until after the surrender of Yorktown, though Colonel Brown of Massachusetts made a brave effort to take it once more. During the War of 1812 it listened to the guns of McDonough’s improvised fleet in action with the British, but it had no active part in this action or in this war, itself.

In 1806 the property on which the old fort stands was leased from Union and Columbia colleges by William F. Pell of New York, it being a part of a State grant to these institutions. Mr. Pell built a summer cottage for himself and, in 1816, purchased the land. The cottage was destroyed in 1825 and a second building known as the Pavilion was erected. The Pavilion is still in use and has never been out of the Pell family.

The walls of Ticonderoga, the fort, were not greatly prized by the early holders of this Pell tract and it remained for the present head of his generation, Mr. Stephen H. P. Pell, to appreciate the historic value of the old place and to set about a work of restoration and repair. The foundations of the walls were still solid and some of the old buildings were still standing when, in 1909, Mr. Pell began his work of rebuilding. The original plans of the fort were secured from the French government. The work of rehabilitation has been carried forward in strict accordance with authorities. Historic points in the grounds surrounding the fort have been marked with tablets and monuments and each year sees an increasing number of visitors coming to Ticonderoga to inspect this history-filled place.

CROWN POINT

LAKE CHAMPLAIN--NEW YORK

It would be hard, gazing upon Crown Point to-day, to realize the storms and terrors it let loose upon the English colonists not quite two hundred years ago. Girt by the smiling waters of one of America’s most beautiful lakes, overtopped by a verdant mountain, and gazing out upon green fields in the shade of majestic woodlands, all of the atmosphere of the place is one of peace and aloofness from the pain of human suffering. Yet the name “Crown Point” was a sinister thing in the early days of the English colonists, particularly in the northern provinces. The New England matron putting to bed her infant Stephen Brewster or little Praise-the-Lord Jones, or the Dutch vrouw in the country round about Albany with her little Van Rensselaer Tasselwitch, had but to utter this dreadful name, “Crown Point,” to bring her child into the most docile state of apprehension. From Crown Point went forth the scalping parties of French, Indian and half-breeds, which preyed upon the borders of the English colonies, carrying wrack and horror wherever they went. A glad and beautiful place, it nourished in its heart an evil spirit.

The settlement of the Crown Point district by the French began soon after the opening of the eighteenth century. The beautiful lake which bears the name of its discoverer had been known in France for more than a century, and the country which lay between Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario--all that wilderness stretch of northern New York of to-day--had been charted with a fair degree of exactness, as well. The riches of the region were well sensed. Accordingly, a large and important province was planned by the French political geographers whose eastern boundary should be the Connecticut and whose western boundary should be Lake Ontario. North was the St. Lawrence River, and the southern confine was rather misty, except that it was determined that it should be all that could be kept from the English. The metropolis and capital of this fine project was to be a place situated at that peculiar bend in Lake Champlain where there was a projecting tongue of land, making a fine site for settlement, fortification and development. In other words, it was to be Crown Point, or Pointe de Couronne, as the French had it. A body of settlers was sent over about 1729, and in 1731 a fortification was commenced at the tip of the Crown Point peninsula which was named Fort Saint Frederic. The remains of this fortification are barely visible on the lake side of the point to-day near the Champlain Memorial light-house. And now a few words as to the geography of this part of Lake Champlain.

The lake, as all know, is a long, narrow tongue of water. About mid-way down it is constricted to even more than its usual slender width (“slender” as proportioned to the length) and the water is carried off at a sharp angle to the east. Just before the constriction, however, there is a protuberance, and on the west shore of this protuberance, or bay, there stands to-day the thriving little foundry town of Port Henry. Directly across the water from Port Henry, and at the point where the lake makes a sharp bend to the east, is a long, narrow point of land, and this is Crown Point. Crown Point has water on two sides of it. Though only a short distance from Port Henry by boat, it is quite a long distance by land, for, then, one must drive down to the base of the peninsula and work out to the point along the five-mile extent of the peninsula. The lake on the east side of Crown Point peninsula is so narrow that a cannon could easily fire across it. Behind Port Henry, that is, on the west side of the lake, is a precipitous mountain-side. The Point, therefore, was well protected in the days when cannon were with difficulty to be found in America and when they could not be transported easily through the wilderness of the New World. It could only be approached by water or by the long, narrow strip of land which joined it with the mainland, and either one of these approaches it could master very easily.

The first fort on Crown Point, Fort Saint Frederic, was a little five-pointed star-shaped fort. Though small in size, it played a far larger part in events than the mighty successor which the years brought and which we shall presently come to. Fort Saint Frederic was for twenty-five years the only French stronghold in this part of the world. In 1756 Ticonderoga was begun. In the council-rooms of old Saint Frederic what strange visitors might have been seen, what bizarre juxtapositions of Old World and New, of sophistication and savagery! During all of its life the little fort was a rendezvous for Indians. Here, too, the Baron Dieskau made himself at home before setting out on the expedition, unfortunate for himself, against Johnson on Lake George. Here might have been seen Montcalm and other of the mightiest and craftiest warriors of old France in the new.

Except as a centre for Indians and a council hall for white and red, the little fort did not ever take part in fighting. When the English finally advanced in force against the strongholds on Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga was the point which bore the brunt of the onslaughts. First, Johnson came against these two hornet nests of French and Indians and accomplished little. Then Abercrombie made his futile and disgraceful try (“Mother Nabercrombie” he was long afterward known in the colonies). Finally the two forts fell before the large force which Amherst, in 1757, brought against them and as a result of the need of men at Quebec which had depleted their strength beyond the power of resistance. Fort Saint Frederic, like Ticonderoga, was deserted without a shot being fired, though its departing commander tried to destroy it by fusing the magazines.

Under the British the old French fort was dismantled and allowed to fall into decay. So well did the situation of Crown Point appeal to the British, however, as a place of fortification and so important was a hold upon Lake Champlain deemed, that the British began the construction of a massive fortress, on the most approved model, which was completed as far as it was ever carried within the course of a few years after Amherst’s occupation of the point and which cost ten millions of dollars. This is an outlay which would be large even to-day. The jagged ruins of the walls of this fort, which never fired a shot in anger, are what one sees now on Crown Point when paying the old place a visit.

When Ethan Allen took Ticonderoga with his Green Mountain boys, Crown Point also fell to the Americans without resistance. It came passively into English hands again and after the Revolution was allowed to fall into decay.

Not far from the remains of Crown Point fort is the beautiful and large monument to Samuel Champlain, known as the Champlain Memorial. It takes the form of a light-house and is most solidly and durably constructed. Erected through the joint subscription of the States of Vermont and New York, the monument is, as well, a tribute to public spirit. In character the light-house is memorial of the past rather than symbolic of the future; a heroic statue in bronze of Champlain faces the east and at the base of the statue is Rodin’s “La France,” presented to the States of New York and Vermont for this undertaking by France.

THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC

(THE CITADEL, CASTLE ST. LOUIS)

CANADA