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.