Fort Ticonderoga: A Short HistoryPell, Stephen H. P.
History
Fort Ticonderoga: A Short History
Pell, Stephen H. P.
Fort Ticonderoga (N.Y.) -- History
“At the beginning of the fight several barges and pontoons coming from
the Chute advanced in sight of Carillon. The steadiness of the
volunteers of Bernard and Duprat, supported by Sieur de Poulharies at
the head of a company of grenadiers and of a piquet of the Royal
Roussillon, with a few cannon shots fired from the fort, made them
retreat.
“These different attacks were almost all in the afternoon and almost
everywhere of the greatest intensity.
“As the Canadians and the colonial troops had not been attacked they
directed their fire upon the column which was attacking our right and
which from time to time was within their range. This column, made up of
English grenadiers and of Scotch Highlanders, charged repeatedly for
three hours without either being rebuked or broken up, and several were
killed at only fifteen feet from our lines.
“At about five o’clock the column which had attacked vigorously the
Royal Roussillon threw itself back on the salient defended by the
Regiment of Guyenne and by the left wing of the Bearn, the column which
had attacked the right wing drew back also, so that the danger became
urgent in those parts. The Chevalier de Lévis moved there with a few
troops of the right [wing] at which the enemy was shooting. The Marquis
de Montcalm hastened there also with some of the reserves and the enemy
met a resistance which slowed up, at last, their ardor.
“The left was still standing up against the firing of two columns which
were endeavoring to break through that part. The Sieur de Bourlamaque
had been dangerously wounded there at about 4 o’clock and Sieur de
Senezeraque and de Privast, Lieutenant Colonels of La Sarre and the
Languedoc Regiments were taking his place and giving the best of orders.
The Marquis de Montcalm rushed there several times and took pains to
have help sent there in all critical moments.
“At 6 o’clock the two columns on the right gave up attacking the Guyenne
battalions and made one more attempt against the Royal Roussillon and
Berry. At last, after a last effort to the left, at 7 o’clock, the enemy
retreated, protected by the shooting of the Rangers, which kept on until
night. They abandoned on the battlefield their dead and some of their
wounded.
“The darkness of the night, the exhaustion and small number of our
troops, the strength of the enemy which, in spite of its defeat, was
still in numbers superior to us, the nature of these woods in which one
could not, without assistance of the savages, start out against an army
which must have had from 400 to 500 of them, several trenches built in
echelon from the battlefield up to their camp, those are the obstacles
that prevented us following the enemy in its retreat. We even thought
that they would attempt to take their revenge and we worked all night to
escape attack from the neighboring heights by traverses, to improve the
Canadian abatis, and to finish the batteries of the left and of the
right [flanks] which had been begun in the morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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