I set out from Montreal on the 5th of May, 1758, to go to Ticonderoga, with all my regular troops—the regiments of La Sarre, La Reine, Royal Rousillon, Berne, Guienne, Languedoc, Berry of two battalions, and the independent companies of the marine detached in Canada; the regiments from France not being recruited, the whole amounted to only about four thousand men.
I had no positive information that the English army had formed the design to come by the lake St. Sacrament in order to attack Ticonderoga (Carillon), and from thence to go to Montreal—but I suspected it, from the proximity of this ford to your settlement upon lake St. Sacrament; nor did I cease beseeching continually M. Vaudreuil, who was then at Quebec, to send me with all possible diligence the Canadian militia, which was the principal force for the defence of the colony.
M. Vaudreuil, who has neither common sense, nor judgment, could not find out that my military conjectures were grounded; and instead of sending me the Canadians, he gave them permission to remain at Montreal, sixty leagues from Ticonderoga, to attend to their agricultural pursuits.
I dare not allege that he was informed, by the Indians of the Iroquois nation, that the object of the English was to invade Canada; that their army was on their way to lake St. Sacrament; that it was with the view of sacrificing me, and making me the victim of a cabal, who led him and governed him blindly, that he kept from me the Canadians.
The 7th of July my conjectures were verified by the arrival of the English army at the Chûte, where lake St. Sacrament terminates, about four miles from Ticonderoga, consisting of six thousand three hundred men, commanded by General Abercrombie, who had succeeded to General Braddock, killed the year before at the river Ohio.
The return of a detachment which I had placed at the Chûte, as an advanced post, who had lost an hundred and fifty men, killed by the English on their arrival there, was a sad confirmation of the bad news. It is scarce possible to imagine a more dangerous and critical situation than mine—without the aid of Canadians, whose way of fighting was so essential to me in the woods—more useful in those countries than regular troops. Fort Carillon, or Ticonderoga, was a square, regularly fortified, each face of it about seventy fathoms in length.
It had four bastions—the walls of masonry, doubled with a rampart, as likewise a ditch, covered way, and glacis. M. de Bourlamarque, an officer of great merit and intelligence, had added a half moon to it.
To retire with my four thousand troops would have been abandoning the colony to General Abercrombie, as the fort could not hold out long against so considerable an army; and being on that side the key of Canada, with the possession of it in the hands of the English, they might go directly to Montreal, and be there in fifteen days, without finding on their way the least obstruction; on the other hand, the match was very unequal in opposing four thousand men to thirteen thousand. There was, however, no room for hesitating, in the choice, and I was soon resolved to save the colony by a bold and desperate stroke or die, gloriously, sword in hand. I made everybody work hard all the night between the 7th and 8th July, cutting down trees to make an intrenchment (CCCC), which, when finished, was very weak, trifling, and could scarce serve as a breast-work to cover the troops.
The engineers, having cut off the branches, laid the trees upon a line on the heights, three or four of them placed horizontally one upon the other, which scarce made it above three feet high—so low that your soldiers might easily have jumped over it;—they made a line of the branches, at two paces distance, on the outside of the trenches (HH). It is certain that if the engineers had only thrown the trees with their heads outwards, and their branches sharpened in pricking points at their ends, it would have made a much stronger intrenchment, more difficult to be forced, and built much sooner.[C] I had not the time to continue the trenches down to the hollow (DD), at the foot of the height, and I placed there two companies of grenadiers.
The hollow upon the right of the height, where the intrenchment was the worst of all my lines, was the post of the companies of marines (C); the regiments lined the rest of the trenches. Next day, the 8th of July, the English army appeared on the borders of the woods, about three hundred fathoms from the front of our intrenchment on the height, and instantly advanced to the attack, formed in three columns (EE), without halting a moment to examine the locale. Two of the columns attacked the height with the utmost impetuosity, but being very soon entangled among the branches, on the outside of the trenches, and impeded by them, they lost there a great many men; some few got through and, jumping into our trenches, were killed by our soldiers with their bayonets.