Those ruthless destroyers, time and man, have wrought sad havoc on the once formidable fortress of Ticonderoga. One wall of solid masonry has withstood their assaults, and still rears its sharp-cut angles and massive front, gray with age and scaled with lichens of a century, as grimly now as in the days of yore, above the broad expanse of fields that stretch away to the southwest.

Across the neck of the peninsula, in the shadow of great oaks that were but saplings then, may be seen the well-preserved breastworks against which the storm of Abercrombie's assault so vainly beat, and within them green mounds show the position of old outworks. But the fort itself is a desolate ruin. Ditches choked with brambles and rubbish, grass-grown ramparts, crumbling bastion, and barrack walls, fallen-in bomb-proof and magazine, mark the sight of a stronghold once deemed worth the blood and treasure of nations to hold or gain.

Amherst's useless fort of Crown Point, built with lavish expense, has not suffered such complete decay. The barracks are in ruin, but the almost unbroken ramparts rear their walled and grassy steeps high above the long incline of the shrub-grown glacis, and the hoary walls of the outworks have stoutly withstood the ravages of almost seven-score years. The older French fort of St. Frederic; its citadel within whose walls commandant, priest, and fierce Waubanakee plotted raids on the frontier hamlets of the heretics, in whose dungeons English captives languished; its chapel, where masses were said in celebration of savage deeds, while white-coated soldier of France, rough-clad habitant, and painted Indian knelt together before the black-robed priest; its water-gate, bastions, scarps, and counter-scarps,—all have fallen into the desolation of utter ruin.

The conquest of Canada accomplished, it was no longer of vital importance that the forts on Lake Champlain should be maintained; consequently the elaborately planned fortifications of Crown Point were never completed, and they, with those of Ticonderoga, fell into such neglect that in September, 1773, the first one was reported by General Haldimand to be entirely destroyed, and the other in a most ruinous state. And though it does not appear that they were dismantled or quite abandoned, for years they were held by garrisons too insignificant to defend them against any vigorous attack. In such defenseless condition they continued, as if too remote from the great centres of revolt to be of consequence to England, while the threatening attitude of her American colonies daily grew more menacing. But while the appeal to arms was yet impending, the importance of these posts became apparent to some active patriots of the New England colonies. In March, 1775, John Brown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who had recently passed through the New Hampshire Grants on a secret mission to Canada, wrote from Montreal to Samuel Adams and Dr. Warren, the Committee of Correspondence in Boston, mentioning one thing to be kept a profound secret. "The fort at Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed by the king's troops. The people in the New Hampshire Grants have engaged to do this business, and in my opinion they are the most proper persons for this job. This will effectually curb this province, and all the troops that may be sent here." Thus it appears that so early as February, 1775, the capture of the fort was contemplated by the leaders of the Green Mountain Boys, and that they were committed to the enterprise.

Yet, when confronted by the actual outbreak of war, they were sorely perplexed. Self-interest inclined them to hold aloof from a rupture with the mother country when king and privy council were considering, with apparent favor to them, their controversy with New York; while on the other hand the ties of birth strongly bound them to their brethren of New England, and every impulse of patriotism impelled them to espouse the cause of their common country.

Soon after receiving the news of the battle of Lexington, which Ethan Allen says almost distracted them, the principal officers of the Green Mountain Boys, and other prominent leaders, met at Bennington, and in the council chamber of the Catamount Tavern "attempted to explore futurity;" though they "found it to be unfathomable,"[59] they resolved to unite with their countrymen, whom they doubted not would, in the event of a successful issue of the conflict, freely accord to them the rights which they demanded.

Without any knowledge of what was already brewing in the Grants, some gentlemen of Connecticut, who on the 26th of April met Benedict Arnold on his way to Cambridge with a company of volunteers, learned from him the defenseless condition of Ticonderoga and the great number of cannon there, and at once formed a plan for its capture. To carry it out, they procured £300 from the treasury of Connecticut. This was given to Noah Phelps and Bernard Romans, who immediately set forward toward the Grants, where it was thought best most of the men should be raised. Just after their departure, Captain Mott arrived at Hartford and proposed the same enterprise, to procure artillery and stores for the people of Boston, and being apprised of what was already on foot, agreed to join in the expedition. He set forth next day with five others, and at Salisbury was joined by eleven more. Arrived at Pittsfield it was determined, by the advice of Colonel Easton and John Brown, just returned from his Canadian mission, to raise a number of men before reaching the Grants, where it was thought the scarcity of provisions and the poverty of the inhabitants would make it difficult to raise and equip a sufficient number. Accordingly about forty men were recruited and made ready to march, in Jericho and Williamstown, by Colonel Easton and Captain Mott, while the others went on to Bennington. When, after this service, Easton and Mott were on their way to the same place, they were met in the evening by an express from their people with the news that Ticonderoga was reinforced and its garrison alert, and with the advice that, as it could not be surprised, the men recruited would better be dismissed. The news was discredited, the advice unheeded, and the colonel and the captain held forward for Bennington, rejoining their companions and finding the leading men of the Grants there in conclave. Captain Mott told his hesitating friends that the "account they had would not do to go back with and tell in Hartford;" and his friends Mr. Halsey and Mr. Bull declared they would go back for no story till they had seen the fort for themselves.[60] It was decided that the attempt to capture the fort should not be abandoned.

Two agents were dispatched to Albany to purchase and forward provisions for the troops, and trusty men were sent to waylay all the roads leading from the Grants to Skenesborough, Lake George, and the Champlain forts, to prevent any intelligence of the movement from reaching those points. Then, going on to Castleton, the committee, of which Captain Mott was chairman, arranged there the plan of operations.

A party of thirty men under Captain Herrick were to go to Skenesborough and capture Major Skene and his men, and go down the lake in the night with his boats to Shoreham to transport the men assembled there across the water; while Captain Douglass was sent to Crown Point to concoct a scheme with his brother-in-law, who lived there, to hire the king's boats, on some plausible pretense, to assist in getting the men over to the New York shore.

Meanwhile Captain Phelps of Connecticut had gone to spy out the condition of Ticonderoga. In the guise of a simple backwoodsman, he easily gained admission to the fort on the pretext of getting shaved, and, after taking careful note of all that could be seen in the place, returned to Castleton and reported to his friends.

Agreeable to a promise made to the men when engaged that they should be commanded by their own officers, Colonel Ethan Allen was given the command of the force which was to attack Ticonderoga. After receiving his orders from the committee, and dispatching Major Gershom Beach of Rutland to rally the Green Mountain Boys, he went on to Shoreham, where they were to assemble.

Major Beach performed the almost incredible feat of making on foot the journey of sixty miles in twenty-four hours, over rough by-paths marked only by blazed trees, and along the wretched roads of the new country. The forest-walled highway led him to the hamlets of Rutland, Pittsford, Brandon, and Middlebury, whose fighting men were quickly summoned. Along its course, he turned aside here and there to warn an isolated settler, to whose betterments he was guided by the songs of the earliest bobolink rejoicing over the discovery of a new meadow, by the sound of axe-strokes, by the drift of smoke climbing through the greening tree-tops from log-heap or potashery. Each man, as summoned, left his task unfinished,—the chopper his axe struck deep in the half-felled tree; the grimy logger his smoking pile; the sawyer his silenced mill with the saw stopped in its half-gnawed course through the great log; the potash-maker left the fire to smoulder out beneath the big kettles; and the farmer, though hickory leaves as large as a squirrel's foot calendared the time of corn-planting, exchanged the hoe for the gun. Each took his firelock, bullet pouch, and powder horn from their hooks above the fireplace, and, bidding brief farewell to homefolk, set forth to the appointed meeting place. In little bands, by threes and twos and singly, scarred and grizzled veterans who had scouted the Wilderness with Rogers, Putnam, and Stark, men in their prime who had seen no service but in raids on the Yorkers, and beardless boys hot with untried youthful valor, took their way toward the lake. Most of them plodded the unmistakable course of the muddy highways till they struck Amherst's road leading to Crown Point; but some, with consummate faith in their woodcraft, took the shortest ways through the forest, now breasting the eastern slope of ledges whose dun incline of last year's leaves was dappled thick with the white bloom of moose-flowers and green tufts of fresh forest verdure, now scrambling down the sheer western wall of diluvian shores, now wading the mire of a gloomy morass, and now thridding the intricate tangle of a windfall.

On the evening of the 9th of May, 1775, they had come to the appointed place of meeting, a little cove about two miles north of Ticonderoga, where the mustering force was quite hidden from the observation of voyagers along the lake, and where the camp-fires might blaze behind the wide screen of newly leafing woods unseen by the garrisons of the two forts. Here the Green Mountain Boys were met by their adored leader, and awaited the arrival of the boats and their comrades coming from the southward.

Allen had just left Castleton when Benedict Arnold arrived there, and demanded the command of the expedition by authority of a colonel's commission just received from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, with orders to raise 400 men for the reduction of Ticonderoga. The committee in charge of the enterprise, in consideration of the conditions under which the men had engaged, refused to give him the command. But he persisted in demanding it, and at once set forward to overtake Allen, whom he found no more disposed to yield to his demand than the committee had been, nor would his men consent to follow another leader. Upon this, Arnold joined the force as a volunteer.

By the evening of the 9th, 270 men, all but forty of whom were Green Mountain Boys, had assembled on the shore of the little creek in Shoreham now known as Hand's Cove, which is in summer a level expanse of sedgy marsh threaded by a narrow sluggish channel, but during the spring floods is a broad cove of the lake, its waters over-running the roots of the trees that grow upon the banks. Here the force anxiously awaited transportation, for the seemingly well-laid plans for securing boats had not proved successful. It was not till near morning that the watchers, often deceived by the cries of strange waterfowl, the sudden plunge of the muskrat, or his long wake gleaming in the light of the camp-fires, at last heard the unmistakable splash of oars, and saw the boats coming in among buttressed trunks of the great elms and water-maples that stood ankle-deep in the spring flood. When scows, skiffs, dugouts, and yawls had crushed through the drift of dead waterweeds and made a landing, it was found that there were not enough of the motley craft collected to transport half the force.

Allen, Easton, Arnold, and eighty others at once embarked, and, crossing the lake, landed a little north of Willow Point, on the New York shore, when the boats returned to bring over those who, under Warner, remained at the cove. Day was now dawning, the rugged horizon line of forest and mountain becoming each moment more distinct against the eastern sky, and it became evident that, if the attack was much longer delayed, there would be no chance of surprising the garrison.

Allen, therefore, determined to move forward at once, without waiting to be joined by those who remained on the other shore. Briefly addressing his men, who were drawn up in three ranks, he called on those who would voluntarily follow him to poise their firelocks. Every musket was poised, the order was given to right face, and Allen placed himself at the head of the centre file; but when he gave the order to march, Arnold again asserted his right to take command, and swore that he would be first to enter the fort. Allen as stoutly maintained his right, and, when the dispute waxed hotter, turned to one of his officers and asked, "What shall I do with the damned rascal? Shall I put him under guard?" The officer, Amos Callender of Shoreham, advised them to compromise the untimely dispute by agreeing to enter the fort side by side, to which they both assented, and the little column at once moved forward in silence, guided by a youth named Beeman, who, living near by, and having spent many of his idle hours in the fort, was well acquainted with the entrances and all the interior appointments.

Captain Delaplace and his little garrison of a lieutenant and forty-two uncommissioned officers and privates[61] were sleeping in careless security, not dreaming of an enemy near, while two or three sentinels kept listless guard. The drowsy sentry at the sallyport, now come upon so suddenly by the attacking party that he forgot to challenge or give an alarm, aimed his musket at the leader and pulled trigger. The piece missed fire, and, Allen running toward him with raised sword, the soldier retreated into the parade, when he gave a loud halloo and ran under a bomb-proof. The Green Mountain Boys now swiftly entered the fort, and, forming in the parade in two ranks facing the east and west rows of barracks, gave three lusty cheers. A sentry made a thrust with his bayonet at one of the officers, and Allen dealt him a sword cut on the head that would have killed him, had not the force of the blow been broken by a comb which kept his hair in place.[62]

He threw down his gun and asked for quarter. Allen demanded to be shown the apartment of the commandant, and was directed to a flight of stairs leading to the second story of the west row of barracks. Mounting to the door at their head, Allen ordered Captain Delaplace to "come forth instantly, or he would sacrifice the whole garrison." The bewildered commandant came to the door with his breeches in his hand, when Allen demanded the immediate surrender of the fort, "By whose authority do you demand it?" asked Delaplace, and Allen answered, "In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Delaplace attempted to parley, but Allen cut him short, and, with his drawn sword over his head, again demanded an immediate surrender. Having no choice but to comply, Captain Delaplace at once ordered his men to parade without arms, and Ticonderoga with all its cannon and military stores was surrendered to the Green Mountain Boys.

Warner presently arrived with the remainder of the force, and after some convivial celebration of the almost bloodless conquest was dispatched by Allen, with about one hundred men, to take possession of Crown Point, which was held by a sergeant and twelve men, and on the 12th Warner and Peleg Sunderland reported its capture on the previous day to the governor and council of Connecticut. Captain Remember Baker, who had received orders to come with his company from the Winooski and join the force, after meeting and capturing two small boats on their way to St. John's with the alarming news of the surrender, arrived at Crown Point nearly at the same time with Colonel Warner.[63] Skenesborough was taken possession of by Captain Herrick, Major Skene made prisoner, and his schooner seized. Callender was sent with a small party to seize the fort at the head of Lake George, an exploit easily accomplished, as its sole occupants were a man and woman.

Thus, by no heroic feat of arms, but by well-laid plans so secretly and promptly executed that they remained unsuspected till their purpose was accomplished, the two strongholds that guarded the passage to the head of the lake fell into the hands of the Americans, with 200 cannon, some mortars and swivels, and a quantity of military stores, all of which were of incalculable value to the ill-supplied patriot army.

Allen at once sent a report of the capture of Ticonderoga to the Albany committee, and asked that provisions and a reinforcement of 500 men might be sent to the fort, as he was apprehensive that General Carleton would immediately attempt its recapture. He also reported the capture to the Massachusetts government, and on the 12th sent the prisoners under guard to Connecticut, at the same time apprising Governor Trumbull of the preparations being made to take a British armed sloop then lying at St. John's.

Ticonderoga had not been many hours in possession of its captors when Arnold again attempted to assume command, as no other officer had orders to show. But the soldiers refused to serve under him, declaring that they would go home rather than do so. To settle the question of authority, the committee issued a written order to Colonel Allen directing him to keep the command of said garrison for the use of the American colonies till further orders from the colony of Connecticut or from the Continental Congress.

The capture of the English sloop was now undertaken. Arnold, in command of the schooner taken at Skenesborough and now armed with a few light guns, and Allen of a batteau, set forth on this enterprise, favored by a brisk south wind, more propitious to Arnold than to his coadjutor, for it wafted his schooner so much more swiftly onward that he reached St. John's, made an easy capture of the larger and more heavily armed sloop, made prisoners of a sergeant and twelve men, and still favored by the wind, which now shifted to the north, was well on his way up the lake with his prize when he met Allen's sluggish craft, some distance south of St. John's, and saluted him with a discharge of cannon. After responding with a rattling volley of small arms, Allen and his party went on board the sloop, and further celebrated the successful issue of the expedition by toasting Congress and the cause of the colonies in bumpers furnished forth from the ample stores of his Majesty's navy. The vessels then pursued their way up the lake, past unfamiliar headlands and islands whose fringe of dark cedars was now half veiled in the misty green of the opening deciduous leaves, now sailing in mid-channel with low shores on either hand, on this La Motte and Grand Isle, on that the pine-clad plains and Valcour, the scene of Arnold's future desperate naval fight, and now, when the Isles of the Four Winds and solitary Wajahose, far astern, hung between lake and sky, they hugged the cleft promontory of Sobapsqua[64] and the rugged walls of the western shore, till Bullwagga Bay was opened and the battlements of Crown Point arose before them and their present voyage ended.

The Americans now had complete control of the lake, the only armed vessels afloat upon its waters, and all the forts except St. John's. Yet for a time a greater value seemed to be attached to the cannon and stores received than to the military importance of the forts taken. After the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, more than a month passed in a wrangle of the commanders for the supremacy, and dissatisfaction and insubordination of the men, before the garrisons were effectively strengthened by a force of a thousand men under Colonel Hinman, who was put in command of the posts by the government of Connecticut, to which, in the division of affairs, this quarter had been relegated.

FOOTNOTES: