Montcalm had only arrived at Ticonderoga on June 30th. There was no doubting the news. His bushrovers brought in word that the English were advancing in such multitudes their boats literally covered the lake. It looked as if the fate of Fort William Henry were to be reversed. Montcalm never dreamed of Abercrombie attacking without artillery. To stay cooped up in the fort would invite destruction. Therefore Montcalm ordered his men out to construct a circular breastwork from the River of the Chutes on the southeast, which empties Lake George, round towards Lake Champlain on the northwest. Huge trees were felled, pile on pile, top-most branches spiked and pointed outwards. Behind these Montcalm intrenched his four thousand men, lying in lines three deep, with grenadiers in reserve behind to step up as the foremost lines fell. At a cannon signal from the fort the men were to rise to their places, but not to fire till the English were entangled in the brushwood. It was blisteringly hot weather. It is said that the troops took off their heavy three-cornered hats and lay in their shirt sleeves, hand on musket, speaking no word, but waiting. {258} On came the English in martial array, pausing in the Narrows at five o'clock for the troops' evening meal, moving on before daylight of July 6 to the landing place. The Rangers had brought in word that Lévis was coming posthaste to Montcalm's aid. Abercrombie thought to defeat Montcalm before reënforcements could come; and now he committed his cardinal error. He advanced across the portage without his heavy artillery. Halfway over, the voice of the French scouts rang out, "Who goes there?" "French," answer the English soldiers; but the French were not tricked. The ambushed scouts fired. Lord Howe, the very spirit of the English army, dropped dead, shot through the breast, though the English avenged his loss by cutting the French scouts to pieces. On the night of the 7th the English army bivouacked in sight of the French barricade. Promptly at twelve o'clock next day a cannon shot from Ticonderoga brought every Frenchman behind the tree line to his place at a leap. Abercrombie had ordered his men to rush the barricade. There was fearful silence till the English were within twenty paces of the trees. There they broke from quick march to a run with a wild halloo! Death unerring blazed from the French barricade,--not bullets only, but broken glass and ragged metal that tore hideous wounds in the ranks of the English. Caught in the brushwood, unable even to see their foes, the maddened troops wavered and fell back. Again Abercrombie roared the order to charge. Six times they hurled themselves against the impassable wall, and six times the sharpshooters behind the lines met the advance with a rain of fire. The Highland troops to the right went almost mad. Lord John Murray, their commander, had fallen, and not a tenth of their number remained