When this disappointment came to the commander-in-chief he was at Crown Point,—but we must track his progress from the beginning.
At the end of June, Amherst had at Lake George about 11,000 men, one half regulars. He set about the campaign cautiously. He had fortified new posts in his rear, and began the erection of Fort George at the head of the lake, of which only one bastion was ever finished. On the 21st of July he embarked his army on the lake, and, landing at the outlet, he followed the route of Abercrombie’s approach to Ticonderoga during the previous year. The disparity of the opposing armies was much like that when Montcalm so successfully defended that post; but Bourlamaque, who now commanded, had orders to retire, and was making his arrangements. Amherst brought up his cannon, and protected his men behind the outer line of entrenchments, which Bourlamaque had abandoned. On the night of the 23d, Bourlamaque escaped down the lake, but a small force under Hebecourt still held the fort, which kept up a show of resistance till the evening of the 26th, when the remaining French, leaving a match in the magazine, also fled. In the night one bastion was hurled to the sky, and the barracks were set on fire.
TICONDEROGA.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. Various plans and views are noted in the Catal. of the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), ii. 395. Cf. plans in Palmer’s Lake Champlain, 85; Lossing’s Field-Book of the Rev., i. 118, and views and descriptions of the ruins in Lossing, i. 127, 131; Watson’s County of Essex, 112. Lieut. Brehm’s description of the fort after its capture is in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1883, p. 21.
CROWN POINT.
From a small vignette on a map by Kitchin of the Province of New York, in the London Magazine, Sept., 1756. There is a similar map in the Gentleman’s Mag., vol. xxv. p. 525.
Various MS. plans and views of Crown Point are noted in the Catal. of the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), i. 277, under date of 1759. The Brinley Catal., ii. 2,939, shows a MS. “Plan of Crown Point Fort, March, 1763,” on a scale of 90 feet to the inch.
There was published in Boston in 1762 a Plan of a part of Lake Champlain and the large new fort at Crown Point, mounting 108 cannon, built by Gen. Amherst. (Haven’s Bibliog., in Thomas, ii. p. 560.) Cf. the plans, nos. 24, 25, in Set of plans, etc. (London, 1763).