Bitter enemies thus holding either end of Lake George, it became a constant battleground. In 1757, after numerous skirmishes, a considerable British and Colonial force was collected at Forts Edward and William Henry, intended to attack Carillon and Crown Point and drive the French down Lake Champlain. General Montcalm then commanded the French, and learning what was going on, and that the main British force was at Fort Edward, he swiftly traversed the lake with a large army and cut off and besieged Fort William Henry, garrisoned by twenty-five hundred men. The commander at Fort Edward was afraid to send reinforcements, and after a few days the British garrison, their guns dismounted and their works almost destroyed, were forced to capitulate. No sooner had they laid down their arms and marched out of the fort and an adjacent entrenched camp, than the Indian allies of the French, the fierce Hurons, fell upon them, plundering indiscriminately and murdering all they could reach, there being fifteen hundred killed or carried into captivity, and over a hundred women slain, with the worst barbarities of the savage. Montcalm did his best to restrain them, but was powerless. The fort was an irregular bastioned square, formed by gravel embankments, surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs laid in tiers, the interstices filled with earth, and it was built almost at the edge of the lake, the site being now occupied by a hotel. The French spent several days demolishing it. The barracks were torn down and the huge logs of the rampart thrown into a heap. The dead bodies filling the casemates were added to the mass, which was set fire, and the mighty funeral pyre blazed all night. Then the French sailed away on the lake, and Parkman says "no living thing was left but the wolves that gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead." When the English on the subsequent day sent a scouting party from Fort Edward they found a horrible scene; the fires were still burning, and the smoke and stench were suffocating, the half-consumed corpses broiling upon the embers. The fort had mounted nineteen cannon and a few mortars, a train of artillery which Johnson had highly prized. The French carried these guns off with them to Carillon, and they afterwards had a chequered history. The English subsequently retook them at Carillon, and changed the name of that fort to Ticonderoga. At the dawn of the Revolution, Ethan Allen and his Vermonters surprised Ticonderoga and got them. Then the guns were drawn on sledges to Boston, and did notable service in the American siege and capture of that city, afterwards going into many engagements with Washington's army. ATTACKING CARILLON.