War was not formally declared between Great Britain and France until 1756. In that year was completed Fort Carillon (at Ticonderoga), about 200 men being employed in its construction. In 1759, in face of siege operations by Lord Amherst, the French abandoned the fort, retired to Fort Frédéric, evacuated and blew up this fort and retired to Canada. Thus, after a full century and a half of more or less interrupted control, French supremacy passed from Lake Champlain.
Here, at Crown Point, Amherst thereupon constructed at enormous expense a new fortress, the principal function of which has been to make a picturesque ruin and a pleasant picnic ground for the people of the present day.
The blood-soaked slopes of this great waterway were hardly dry before the war between Great Britain and her American colonies broke out and these strategic points on the lake, which were vital as buttresses against invasion by French and Indians from Canada, became equally so to the colonists for safeguarding the valley from British occupation.
Crown Point and Ticonderoga again became the center of interest and activity. The local patriots determined to seize Fort Ticonderoga and learned that the Green Mountain Boys were, as they expressed it, “the proper persons to do the job.” The story of the surprise and capture of the fort by Ethan Allen and his party of eighty-three men is authentic. The verbal form of his command to surrender “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress” has been questioned, but it is quite in the style of his other sayings and his writings. Listen to his address to his little band before the attack:
“Friends and fellow soldiers, you have for a number of years past been a scourge and terror to arbitrary powers. Your valor has been famed abroad and acknowledged, as appears by the advice and orders to me from the General Assembly of Connecticut to surprise and take the garrison now before us. I now propose to advance before you, and, in person, conduct you through the wicket gate; for this morning either we quit our pretensions to valor or possess ourselves of this fortress in a few minutes; and inasmuch as it is a desperate attempt, which none but the bravest of men dare undertake, I do not urge it on any contrary to his will. You that will undertake, voluntarily, poise your firelocks!”
Allen was a primitive man, a pioneer and land speculator. Like the Homeric heroes and the Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs, he indulged in high and mighty talk before the attack. In his day and among his people the accomplishment of formal speech and writing was not common and lent distinction to its possessor, and Allen was a man to let his light shine in this direction.
Ticonderoga witnessed the first lowering of His Majesty’s colors in the War for Independence. Allen says of this occasion: “The sun seemed to rise that morning with a superior lustre and Ticonderoga and all its defenders smiled on its conquerors who tossed about the flowing bowl and wished success to Congress and the liberty and freedom of America.”
Shortly after, Seth Warner and his men captured the small garrison here at Crown Point together with 200 pieces of cannon.
In the struggle for supremacy of the Lake Champlain district men fought not only for the glory of France and her religion, the glory of England and the spread of her institutions, the independence of the Colonies and the abrogation of unjust taxes, but also, and chiefly, as settlers, for the protection of their homes and the validity of their land titles. They struggled, nevertheless, blindly, as all men do, and were the instruments of forces and the larger design of which they could have no vision. Notwithstanding her courage, superior leadership and organization, France was defeated because, as has been said, “a new nation had arrived too great in numbers, in extent of territory, in strength of independent, individual character to be overwhelmed.”