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.
[Illustration: The Mess Hall
A Council Room
INTERIOR VIEWS OF FORT TICONDEROGA, N. Y.]
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.
[Illustration: Where the flag flew
The Ruined Barracks
CROWN POINT, N. Y., IN DEAD OF WINTER]
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
That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed up the St. Lawrence
River in 1535, but it was not until 1608, when Champlain’s vessel
brought the first permanent colonists of New France, that Quebec
was founded. The storm-tossed little caravel entered the St.
Lawrence in the early summer of that year. Champlain landed his
miscellaneous following, built “L’Habitation,” as he named the
first official residence in Quebec, and laid the foundations of
a small fort, an act portentous of the stirring events which the
future held calmly waiting their turn and which were to give Quebec
so conspicuous a place in the military annals of the New World.
The first fortifications were little more than gun platforms placed
at an advantageous position so as to command the river. Their site
became the location of Castle St. Louis and is to-day the eastern
end of the Dufferin Terrace. So it is easy to remember where
Champlain laid the foundations of the new city.
[Illustration:
By courtesy of Detroit Publishing Company
THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC]
The new seat of power was shortly to see its master exerting his
authority in a way not to be lightly mistaken. Treachery was
plotted by some among Champlain’s followers, who planned to
assassinate their chief and sell his new city to the Spaniards.
News of this move was brought to Champlain’s ears. He caused the
ringleaders to be seized by his soldiers and hung in the fort
until dead. In this fashion the stronghold saw its first acts of
violence. Scurvy marked the passage of the first winter in the New
World of the little fort’s defenders, and by the spring only the
most hardy were alive.
The years which came between 1608 and 1629, the date of the first
formal siege of Quebec, brought enlargement and strength to both
the fort and the city. During this period both had been frequently
surrounded by hostile Indians, who feared the white man’s guns too
much to attempt an attack by storm but who prowled around beneath
the very ramparts of the fort seeking for unwary adventurers who
might be without the gates. The control of the little colony in
France had passed through various hands, but always the chief
executive in the New World had been its founder, the rugged
Champlain. The year 1629 finds the little colony in the possession
of the Company of the 100 Associates, an organization founded by
His Excellency, Cardinal Richelieu, and of which His Eminence was
himself a member, and the winter of this year finds the colony in
its usual desperate straits, beleaguered by winter and by savage
foe and deserted in all but name by its sponsors in France.
In the spring of 1629 the inhabitants of Quebec were gladdened by
the intelligence that a fleet had been discerned from Cap Tourmente
in the mouth of the river and that it was even then approaching the
city. It was supposed that this was the long-wished-for squadron
of relief ships and that all would be prosperity and good cheer
in the town for a time now. The citizens assembled on the walls
of the fort to descry the distant sail, when word was brought by
a friendly Indian that the looked-for vessels, far from being
messengers of peace, were, in fact, emissaries of war; that they
were English, and that they had just burned and pillaged a fishing
village in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion on the way up the
river. War had been declared between England and France and Quebec
had not received word of it! Joy was changed to woe.
The next day emissaries arrived from Sir David Kirke, the English
admiral in command of the fleet, demanding the surrender of the
town and the fort, but Champlain, believing that help would soon
arrive from France and not being of the temper, anyhow, which
quickly gives up, turned these messengers away with words of
defiance. The first siege of Quebec was now begun.
To tell the truth it was an informal sort of matter, anyhow,
this first siege of Quebec. The English vessels pounded away at
the town for a day or two in a casual fashion and then drifted
down the river. The French, on their part, had but fifty pounds
of powder and were very careful about wasting any of this. Time
passed and still no aid came from distant France. At length the
intelligence which Champlain had been dreading was brought to
him. The long-awaited French relief ships had entered the mouth
of the St. Lawrence only to be overcome and seized by the English
blockader. Hope had now departed, and when, in July, three English
ships sailed up to the town, Champlain and his sixteen soldiers
watched them apathetically because they knew that they, themselves,
could do no more. Quebec was surrendered to the English and on
July 20, 1629, the English flag for the first time flew over the
little settlement. Said one of Kirke’s captains: “There was not in
the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this
examinate’s knowledge, any victuals save only one tubb of bitter
roots.”
It was not until 1632 that Quebec was restored to the French by
the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and during its three years of
English occupancy the point had made no progress. The Indians did
not like their rough, new associates and trade had languished. Even
the fort was in sad condition.
The summer of 1632 saw the little settlement in French hands and
under the guidance of Emery de Caen, a fiery French Huguenot.
The next year found the colony once more in the direction of the
veteran Champlain. It is not clear why de Caen was given power
for this one year. On Christmas Day, 1635, the Father of New
France passed peacefully away in the fort which had seen so many
of his earthly activities. His body was laid to rest in a “chambre
particulier,” according to old record. Late investigation inclines
to the belief that Champlain’s last resting place was a niche
hollowed out of the stone half way down Mountain Hill in full view
of the strand on which his early “Habitation” was built.
The successor of Champlain, M. de Montmagny, a Knight of Malta,
rebuilt of stone Champlain’s fort shortly after his arrival in
1636, and Castle St. Louis had now a most martial appearance. Close
to the castle was the Jesuit presbytery, this close conjunction
of church and Mars well typifying the union of powers which held
authority in the colony. All public functions were religious in
character and the black-robed priests held the balance of power in
the council-room.